Information May Want to Be Free, but Journalism Can’t Be

Information May Want to Be Free, but Journalism Can’t Be: An Industrial Analysis of ‘Newspaper’ Disruption - Professor Amanda Lotz.

The technological changes affecting news organizations over the last two decades may be well known, but how they connect with and have challenged the business imperatives that guide commercial news organizations is complicated. In this presentation, media industry scholar Amanda Lotz turns her focus on the implications of internet communication technologies for print news.

Drawing from research about ‘newspapers’ for her forthcoming book Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars (MIT Press, 2021) Amanda examines the multifaceted effects of digital technology on the financial foundation of industries that fund ‘print’ journalism by selling attention to advertisers. She explores how different digital tools ‘unbundled’ newspapers and decimated the business model – whether distributing news and journalism on paper or online.

5:00pm (Physical attendees) Arrive
5:25pm (Virtual attendees) Zoom session opens
5:30pm Professor Amanda Lotz presentation and Q&A
6:30pm Conclude event and move to post-event venue

Amanda D. Lotz is a professor and leader of the Transforming Media Industries research project in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of ten books that explore television and media industries. Her most recent books explore the connections between internet-distributed services such as Netflix and the legacy television industry, as well as the business strategies and revenue models that differ. Her award-winning book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, now in its second edition, has been translated into Mandarin, Korean, Italian, and Polish. She is frequently interviewed by NPR’s Marketplace, has appeared on BBC, CNN's The Nineties, ABC, SBS, HuffPost Live, and ZDF and been interviewed for articles in the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press, Wired, and Men’s Health among many others. She has published articles about the business of television at Quartz, Salon, The New Republic, hosted the Media Business Matters podcast, and tweets about television and media @DrTVLotz. For more, see amandalotz.com

This month we've teamed up with the QUT Digital Media Research Centre who have kindly organised an event space and will also help us broadcast the talk live via zoom (with a recording to go out shortly after the event as well).

If you are in Brisbane and wish to attend this event in person then please head to https://forms.gle/SQPd4299n44Ct2s79 to RSVP for COVID reporting purposes.

If you wish to join us for the webinar then please pre-register at: https://qut.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dKwSQsY_TRWFqUj3gcBZuw