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Journalism 2050
Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin talk with the smartest minds in media to discuss the roots of today's crisis in journalism, from democracy's decline to the rise of Al, and to explore the uncertain future of journalism in the digital age. This series is brought to you by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Columbia Journalism Review, with help from the New School's Journalism + Design Lab. Journalism 2050 is supported by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
Episodes
13 episodes
Razia Iqbal looks back—and ahead.
In 1990, a chance encounter in the office elevator changed the trajectory of Razia Iqbal’s career. She was then a subeditor at the BBC on a six-month contract. Days later, she was on a flight to Pakistan as the BBC’s foreign correspondent, a...
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The Fight to Save Journalism in Georgia
In Georgia, since a new party took power in 2024, founded by a billionaire oligarch with
The Old Playbook of Power and Influence Is Different Now
When Ronald Reagan won the presidency, in 1980, it was a victory long in the making. For almost half a century, conservatives had plotted ways to cut taxes and undo workers’ rights. Their playbook for political influence went something like ...
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How Elon Musk is colonizing the future.
Before Elon Musk, there was Henry Ford: an attention-seeking car manufacturer, newspaper owner, and media celebrity who pushed reactionary views on the public and transformed society around his business interests. “Fordism” was more than a m...
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Profit or Nonprofit? A Debate over Journalism’s Future
While the newspaper industry continues to contract, nonprofit news outlets have proliferated over the past decade. But dismissing profitable models for journalism is premature. How can journalism survive? Perhaps ...
Outlier Media Reimagines What Local News Can Be
In 2016, Sarah Alvarez, a former civil-rights lawyer and reporter, reimagined what journalism could be. Rather than break news or publish stories on a website, her project, Outlier Media, promised to provide the people...
How the Gawker Trial Was the Gateway to Trump: Examining a political legacy, ten years on.
In 2007, Valleywag, Gawker’s gossip column devoted to Silicon Valley, published a short piece about a then-little-known venture capitalist and tech founder, under the headline “
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Jay Rosen on the Digital Revolution That Wasn’t
In 2006, Jay Rosen, the media scholar, published his influential article “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” His medium was as important as his message. Although the essay would later appear in media-studies textbooks, it was first ...
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Ben Smith Isn’t Afraid of the Future
It has been called “the last good day on the internet”: on February 26, 2015, Americans flocked online to watch fugitive llamas in Arizona evade their captors on a live broadcast, shortly before an ambiguously colored dress—blue and black to...
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How Silicon Valley Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Oligarchs
When Natalia Antelava cofounded Coda Story, in early 2016, to cover democratic backsliding around the globe, she wasn’t expecting the tech industry to be such a big part of the story. It wasn’t only that autocratic reg...
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The Future of Journalism After Gaza
Examining an ongoing crisis for press freedom—and how to manage security risks going forward.For Journalism 2050’s inaugural live event, Emily Bell and Heather Chaplin are joined by Azmat Khan, the director of Columbia...
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Douglas Rushkoff on Being the Intellectual Dominatrix of Billionaire Tech Bros
In 1992, a writer named Douglas Rushkoff signed a contract for Cyberia, his book about the internet subcultures of the West Coast. The next year, his publisher canceled it, according to Rushkoff’s recollection, on the ...
