Markets Wired

The Federal Trade Commission today released an agenda for its December 1-2, 2009 workshop on the future of journalism in the Internet age. [http://www.ftc.gov/opp/workshops/news/agenda.pdf ]

Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet for news and information. Advertisers are moving ads to online sites and scaling back on ad buys as a result of the recession, and news organizations are struggling with large debts that were acquired during better times. As a result, some are questioning how journalism will evolve in the future.

The workshop will consider a wide range of issues, including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced without reducing quality.

The diverse group of participants who will discuss these issues at the workshop include Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp., Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, and Aneesh Chopra, Assistant to the President, Associate Director and Chief Technology Officer for the Office of Science and Technology of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. Other panelists include representatives from E.W. Scripps Co., The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Yahoo!, Google, the National Newspaper Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, Hearst Television, National Public Radio, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Associated Press, ThomsonReuters, Propublica, Blogher.com, NorthwestCitizen.com, the Knight Foundation, the University of Chicago, the Association of National Advertisers, the Center for Digital Democracy, and the Media Access Project.

The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,700 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s Web site provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.

(News Future)