More than 200 journalists, media executives and academics from throughout the world participated in the 12th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ) April 1–2, 2011, at the University of Texas at Austin. Participants from North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Europe discussed successes and challenges in using digital technology to cover news and engage audiences while sustaining online news operations.

The ISOJ has been organized since 1999 by Professor Rosental C. Alves, the Knight Chair in International Journalism, UNESCO Chair in Communication, and director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT Austin. It receives generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Dallas Morning News, and UT’s College of Communication.

The symposium began Friday with the announcement by Alves and symposium research chair Amy Schmitz Weiss that ISOJ has launched an academic journal, #ISOJ, which is published as an ebook that is accessible here in several formats.

“The ISOJ has evolved throughout the years. First it became international. Then we added a research component so the new journal #ISOJ is a natural continuation of that evolution,” Alves said.

“The research this year was extremely high caliber and reflected global perspectives on online journalism,” said Schmitz Weiss, assistant professor at the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University. “The 20 papers presented this year were selected from 50 papers—a record for the ISOJ.”

Reasons to be Cheerful: An Optimist’s View on the State of Digital Journalism
In the opening keynote address, Vivian Schiller, former president and CEO of NPR who resigned last month, gave positive predictions for the field of digital journalism. She based her optimism on seven reasons, including new experiments in local news, advancements in the use of Twitter and software applications for gathering news and engaging with audiences, and the willingness of traditional news organizations to try new projects without fear of disrupting their core businesses.

Schiller also spoke of the new generation of “digital natives” who care deeply about journalism and will ultimately determine its future by reinventing the business model.

Paywalls and Mobile Devices
At the panel “Paywalls: Charging for News Content: Does it Work?” media executives discussed the merits and challenges of charging for content at a time when audiences are used to accessing news online for free and only days after The New York Times began charging. Editors described mixed results with creating paywalls and encouraged experimentation.

The panel “Designing for iPad and Other Mobile Devices” featured tech experts who discussed how media outlets can design their appearance, content, and business models to work across the latest digital platforms like tablets and mobile devices. Paul Brannan, the outgoing emerging platforms editor for BBC, said media should function as “dynamic news machines” that “take advantage of a device that's always on and always personalized." (His favorite example of this, he said, is Zite, a personalized magazine for the iPad.”) Filipe Fortes of Treesaver gave a presentation that stressed the value in cross-platform design, specifically creating visually appealing iPad-like products that work on mobile, platform devices, and the web. In contrast, John Kilpatrick, creative director of the iPad-only publication The Daily, discussed the power of building content specifically for a “dynamic interface” that combines the benefits of web, print, and broadcast with the visual appeal and usability of a touch screen.

Beyond Breaking News
In an afternoon keynote address, Meredith Artley, vice president and managing editor of CNN.com, described her organization’s plans to incorporate more interactivity. She said the network is strengthening its core work—such as coverage of the Japan tsunami, which brought an average of 75 million daily page views during the first 10 days—while expanding into new areas, including the CNN Freedom Project devoted to ending modern-day slavery; and the expansion of its food beat through the Eatocracy blog.

CNN’s strategy involves experimenting with new ways to involve audiences in the news gathering process. This includes expanding the popular iReports, into an Open Story, which weaves the role of citizen contributors more tightly into the reporting. Artley said CNN will soon allow users to create video commentaries in response to stories on CNN.com

Research on News Innovations and Twitter
The Friday sessions concluded with two research panels. “Examining News Innovations” featured these papers (available here in PDF):
*Open APIs and News Organizations: A Study of Open Innovation in Online Journalism
*Intrigued, But Not Immersed: Millenial Students Analyze the iPad’s Performance as a News Platform
*Public Broadcasters Venture into Online Hyperlocal News: A Case Study of Newsworks.org
*Experiments in Location-Based Content: A Case Study of Postmedia’s Use of Foursquare
*Educating the New Generation Journalist: From Moodle to Facebook
*The Place for Creativity in Routine in the Online Newsroom

The panel “All About the Tweet and More” included these studies available in PDF :
*Twitter First: Changing TV News 140 Characters at a Time
*New Opportunities for Diversity: Twitter, Journalists and Traditionally Underserved Communities
*Shoveling Tweets: An Analysis of the Microblogging Engagement of Traditional News Organizations
*See You on Facebook or Twitter? How 30 Local News Outlets Manage Social Networking Tools

The Knight Center compiled Storify versions of the tweets from the first day of the ISOJ. See Schiller, paywalls, CNN’s iReport and social media dominate Twitter on first day of ISOJ (English), and versions in Spanish and Portuguese.

Nonprofit Journalism Online: Is the Model Sustainable?
In a session on Saturday, founders of non-profit news organizations illustrated new models of providing news that is missing from traditional news organizations, and new approaches to raising funds to sustain their operations. In the San Francisco Bay Area, The Bay Citizen (San Francisco Bay Area), operates in a region where news organizations have reduced their output by more than half in recent years, said CEO Lisa Frazier. Support from foundations and individual memberships currently funds the 30-person operation, but The Bay Citizen is trying to educate citizens about the need to support journalism, given its current difficulties, and ultimately “the community will decide if this is sustainable.”

In contrast, Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, founder of IDL-Reporteros, whose small group of reporters has published 2,000 investigative stories dealing with topics such as corruption and drug trafficking, sustains his organization largely through a foundation grant of $200,000. Given the nature of IDL-Reporteros’ work, “there is no chance whatsoever to get advertising or sponsorship from any major Peruvian company, or any foreign company doing business in Peru.” His ideas include obtaining support from organizations outside Peru that are committed to transparency and democracy.

Research Panel: Beyond News Routines, Beyond News Consumption
This panel featured these research papers (available here):
*Journalists in Network Society: Utilization of ICTs Inside Three Egyptian Newsrooms
*Is the Medium the Message? Predicting Popularity of Top U.S. News Sites with Medium-Specific Features
*Opening the Gates: Interactive and Multi-Media Elements of Newspaper Websites in Latin America
*Stopping the Presses: A Longitudinal Case Study of the Christian Science Monitor Transition From Print Daily to Web Always
*Friends Who Choose Your News

Building a Platform for Neighborhood News and Information
In an afternoon keynote address, Warren Webster, CEO of the hyperlocal news company Patch Media, said his site seeks to be the principal platform for local news and content that same way that Facebook has become the digital infrastructure for social networking. To “solve the local problem” the company creates “patches” for small-scale communities (currently in 800 towns). In each place, a single staff editor cares for organizing freelance reporters, covering events, and providing digital resources.

Patch, the “largest hirer of journalists in 2010,” does not escape controversy. In her Friday morning keynote address, Vivian Schiller implied the site did not engage in real journalism, and several audience members questioned Webster about the company’s employment practices that keep costs so low. He said that his staff editors are journalists with an average of nine years experience, who receive benefits and competitive salaries, but his freelance budget is more flexible as the site is still young.

Engaging Communities
A decade after blogs and user forums allowed readers a chance to interact with news sites, editors participating in the panel “Engaging Communities with the News” emphasized the use of social media and creative experiments to draw and retain audiences to their news sites.

Among the experiences presented, Egil Hansen, editor-in-chief of VG Multimedia Norway, said he used to receive up to 10 emails a day from readers who complained about typos and language mistakes. The company invited readers to police the content and selected 400 volunteers to fix the errors out of a poolof 5,000 applicants. The newsroom has corrected 17,000 typos and mistakes since the program began a year ago. Since then, Hansen has received only three complaints from readers.

The New York Times’ experiences in engaging audiences, as explained by Jennifer Preston (former social media editor) include posts on Facebook by columnist Nicholas Kristof during his reporting in the Middle East, and "creating an event” by inviting readers to submit photographs taken precisely at the same "moment in time on a Sunday in May (overloading the servers with 14,000 photos).

Going Beyond Engagement
The final research panel, “Beyond the Conversation, Beyond Engagement” featured these presentations (available here in PDF).
*Knitting Together a Public: The Hyperlink, News Aggregation and the Cultures of Digital and Analog Evidence in Web-Era Journalism
*The Active Recipient: Participatory Journalism Through the Lens of the Dewey–Lippman Debate
*The Knight News Challenge: How it Works, What Succeeds, and Why that Matters for the Shaping of Journalism Innovation
*Love it or Leave it? The Relationship Between Polarization and Credibility of Traditional and Partisan Media

Even after the two-day ISOJ concluded, discussions continued on the ISOJ Twitter feed.

“Even though ISOJ is over, it is still accessible," Alves said. "We had more than 5,000 Tweets, and hundreds of people accessed the video stream, which will soon be archived here,” Alves said. “So we were very happy that we have been practicing during the conference the kind of social media engagement that we talked about in our sessions.”