The State of our Media

This month we're holding our first physical meetup in a long time, partnering with the QUT School of Communication.

The topic is the state of our local news industry. With ever more redundancies and newsroom closures, and a looming state election, we want to know how Queenslanders are keeping themselves informed? Where are we turning to for news? And what might the future hold?

We have assembled an incredible panel of local experts, spanning community, social and traditional media.

We have capacity for 18 people to join us at the Gibson Room, Level 10, Z Block, QUT Gardens Point. For everyone else we will be streaming the panel via zoom (and taking questions from both audiences). Whether you wish to stream the event or attend physically, we please ask that you first RSVP to this meetup event. For those that wish to join us physically, please head over to https://forms.gle/ka4V4Pnb3ZkmT1vd9 to register your interest.

5:30pm (Physical attendees) Arrive
5:45pm (Virtual attendees) Zoom session opens
6:00pm Panel discussion including Q&A
7:15pm Conclude event and move to QUT Botanical Bar

Panellists

Brisbane Times editor Danielle Cronin has worked in regional, metropolitan, and overseas newsrooms. She covered federal politics for several years and recently completed a newsroom leadership fellowship with the Google News Initiative and Columbia Journalism School.

Prof. Axel Bruns is a Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at QUT, and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. His books include Are Filter Bubbles Real? (2019) and Gatewatching and News Curation: Journalism, Social Media, and the Public Sphere (2018), and the edited collections Digitizing Democracy (2019), the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics (2016), and Twitter and Society (2014). His research blog is at http://snurb.info/, and he tweets at @snurb_dot_info.

Jyi Lawton is the CEO of the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association and a proud descendant of the Bidjara people in Central Queensland and Mackenzie clan from the northwest highlands of Scotland. Jyi has a broad background in Architectural Design, Law and Justice, and Business. Jyi is an entrepreneur and the previous founder and Managing Director of Yimbana Management Consulting. He is also an award-winning artist and has held operational and senior leadership positions across State and Federal Government in youth justice, business and economic development.

Vanessa Wiltshire is senior researcher for the critically acclaimed Australian Story program with 25 years’ experience across ABC and commercial television, radio and digital platforms. Vanessa was Content Director ABC Brisbane for six years and former EP of the mornings and drive programs – producing breaking local and state issues content and Qld election night coverage. She’s also been involved with ABC national Federal election projects including Vote Compass. In 2019, Vanessa was a Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Oxford, publishing a paper “Keeping it Local – can collaborations help save local public interest journalism” in which she researched several UK and US examples and provided findings for potential applications for Australia. This year she has provided analysis to the 2020 Australian Digital News Report produced by Canberra University.

Katie Cassidy will be moderating the panel. She helps organise Hacks/Hackers Brisbane and is a digital journalist, media trainer and product specialist at the ABC. Follow her on Twitter @kcassowary