Next April, a great event will be holding its fourth annual installment here in Perugia, Italy: The International Journalism Festival
I'm posting this advance notice for a few reasons. Across the ridge I'll discuss them briefly and include some links for more info...
First, I attended the 2009 edition, seeing a discussion with Seymour Hersh about the American mainstream media's complicity in leading us into a criminal war. It was remarkable, despite anyone's view of Hersh, partly because of the intimacy of the events in a small medieval town, but also because of the enthusiastic participation by young journalism students from all over the world. Hersh was also quite engaging and open to questions - even challenging ones, and he surprised the festival promoters by eagerly looking to engage young journalists and students at any opportunity.
The second reason for posting this, is to encourage all DKos readers to visit the festival's website. All of their past events are listed, and many are available to watch online via an affiliate website. (Note: the events are almost always in the speaker's native language, with introductions in Italian. There are no subtitles, so just have a little patience through those intros.)
The third reason, is to note how impressed I was with the general atmosphere of the festival. As I said, their was a lot of youth involvement - and a lot of discussion about what the status of journalism is these days - the wave and impact of blogs, the fate of newspapers, etc. Journalism as an industry has a lot of events, but this one is unique in its inclusiveness, trying to reach out to and involve public and youth participation -- and all events are free. I'm not a blogging budding journalist and never pretend to be. But I am one to seek out information, and I believe journalism is crucial to any democratic society. This festival, in my opinion, is a must-see/attend event for anyone with any interest in seeing journalism survive and/or thrive, in whatever form it may come.
My final reason for posting is that I have offered to assist the creators of the festival however I can.
Being an American who follows several sites like DKos, TPM, and HuffPo, watches Maddow and Obermann online, as well as Democracy Now, etc, this has translated into thinking a lot about how to best address the topics of the blogosphere's journalistic and/or political impact, and more generally the issue of alternative media vs. the MSM.
The festival promoters are European, but well aware of the "advanced stage" of the American blog-sites when it comes to hard-hitting journalism efforts and other potential powers. But I also pointed out the refreshing stories of KO and the young Dr. Maddow. We've discussed Amy Goodman, Arianna Huffington, Jon Stewart to name a few... And of course we talked about DKos.
So, this festival is a great - and important - event still trying to get itself more firmly established. It occurs in a wonderful place to spend some time.
So I gotta ask, in all seriousness, how could one go about getting Markos to be one of the major guest speakers at the 2010 event??
I'll be watching in the comments, if anyone has any suggestions for how to reach out and make a better/more formal invitation. Any additional helpful suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Here are a couple video spots about the festival:
[P.S.: Yes, Perugia is the town where the American girl from Seattle is accused of killing her British roommate. A rather tawdry - and tragic - case. But I can only say that the coverage I've seen on American news sites has been far less than objective.]