Mobile Me&You 2024
Syracuse University
The Newhouse School
The Herg Auditorium
Newhouse 3, Room 140
Schedule subject to change.
Friday, October 18
1:00-1:15 p.m. – Introductions
1:15-2:00 p.m. – Robert Hernandez
“[BLANK] is the Future of Journalism: Mobile Me&You Edition”
This lively session mixes improv with what could be the next disruption to save journalism. Based on a game co-created by Prof. Robert Hernandez, attendees will hear quick takes on what could be the future of news.
2:15-3:00 p.m. – Subbu Vincent
“News and Journalistic Authenticity: How To Tackle the Generative AI Distribution Era”
With the arrival of sleek Answer UX-based LLM-powered summarization chatbots, the ethics of news distribution and news ingestion has only become murkier. Answer engines like Perplexity.ai are driving a different form of news discovery: summarizations and citations. But digesting news into summarized “knowledge” nuggets for power users is not ethically as straightforward as it seems. Some worry that Perplexity.Ai-type app companies will gain more from your hard journalistic work than give you and long-tail publishers back any real RoI. Meanwhile, search, social media, and a variety of news aggregator apps – Google News, Apple News, MSN, Yahoo News, Smart News, Seekr, Ground News, Inkl – continue their diverse approach to distributing your news stories to their users.
3:15-4:00 p.m. – Ben Kreimer
“Using Mobile Media to Reach Underserved Audiences”
Collaborative Futures is a people-centered practice of sharing/learning/making across disciplines, from journalism to archaeology and social justice, for revealing enduring and innovative collisions of media and technology. Collaborative Futures is also the name of an R&D network of journalists, technologists, digital creatives, and human rights defenders working in East Africa. In this presentation, Ben Kreimer will share examples of Collaborative Futures processes and projects, including WhatsApp chatbots for human rights abuse archiving and news distribution, and a one-of-a-kind 360-degree camera trap for nocturnal African wildlife.
4:15-5:00 p.m. – Jason Webb
“Extending Your Mobile Reality”
Films like The Matrix and Minority Report have provided captivating glimpses into the power of immersive storytelling, blurring the lines between fiction and our everyday lives. We will dive into cutting-edge platforms and technologies that allow us to create stories that transcend traditional boundaries. We’ll explore tools that enable you to weave narratives directly into the fabric of reality, making your audience not just passive observers, but active participants. Through hands-on experimentation, you’ll discover how to leverage these exciting innovations to enhance immersion and elevate your storytelling.
Saturday, October 19
8:45-9:00 a.m. – Introductions
9:00-9:45 a.m. – Dan Pacheco
“Ethical AI For Your Journalism Beat”
AI does much more than write. It’s like an eager intern in your pocket that can make you a better reporter. Learn how to create your own custom AI models to pore through mountains of documents, perform analysis on data to uncover stories, code up visual presentations of data, and more.
10:00-10:45 a.m. – Tamar Charney
“Things All Journalists Should Know About Audio Storytelling”
With the rise of podcasting, voice platforms, and AI all journalists should know the basics of audio storytelling. Generative AI has drastically improved the quality of synthetic speech meaning more people are consuming print stories by listening! We’ll take a look at why even print journalists could benefit from learning to write for the ear.
11:00-11:45 a.m. – David Cohn
“Engaging the Audience via SMS and AI”
In this talk David Cohn will go over Subtext, a tool he helped build with Advance Local that news orgs across the country are using SMS to engage their audience on topics ranging from breaking news, fact checks, daily headlines and more. He will also highlight how Generative AI can be used to sift through audience/social comments to help reporters with super listening.
12:00-1:00 p.m. – Lunch
1:00-1:45 p.m. – Kate Abbey-Lambertz
“Just a text away: Building responsive — and responsible — relationships with readers”
How the Detroit Outlier uses SMS to fill information, accountability and connection gaps in Detroit.
Outlier Media began texting Detroiters nearly a decade ago, long before we had a website. The landscape and technology have changed drastically, but many of the problems are the same: how do we reach readers where they are, with the info they need? How do we earn trust and loyalty in an ecosystem filled with misinformation and generated content? How can a newsroom make itself a utility in its readers’ lives? We’ll look at the ways Outlier has oriented around responsiveness and filling information gaps and how texting can give newsrooms unique opportunities to form direct relationships with audiences.
2:00-2:45 p.m. – Adam Harder
“Making Media Literacy Sexy: How InPress is Using Journalism to Forge Deep Human Connection”
Factual information has been losing the attention battle to misinformation and recommender systems, but InPress is changing that by using media literacy as the conduit to deeper human connection. This session will explore how InPress leverages shared news consumption and trustworthy journalism as the foundation for a new type of online social ecosystem. Attendees will learn how news can act as a powerful social catalyst, helping people learn about their subconscious selves, everyone else, and their compatibility. Join us to see how InPress is not only making media literacy vogue but also creating a new revenue stream, with hyper-engaged younger audiences, for the journalism industry.
2:45-3:15 p.m. – Short Break
3:15-3:45 p.m. – Panel, Brant Houston, moderator; Ryan Restivo, Anthony Adornato
“New Journalism Models: Being Mobile First”
This session looks at how journalism can better adapt to an audience that often starts its journey on a mobile device and gets its news through social media and messages from friends, family and influencers.
Should we reshape our thinking on news to view it as a mobile-first streaming service that offers stories, targeted news aggregation, newsletters, and text messages? And how do we methodically and effectively weave AI into the mix, especially for community news?