1 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blo gs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Dialogue Doheny Memorial Library Intellectual Commons Room March 22, 2006 2 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? The Norman Lear Center The Los Angeles Institute For The Humanities Founded in January 2000, the Norman Lear Center is a The Los Angeles Institute for the multidisciplinary research and Humanities was founded in 1998 to public policy center exploring create an intellectual center by implications of the convergence of bringing together academics and entertainment, commerce and writers, musicians and dancers, society. On campus, from its base curators and critics, journalists and in the USC Annenberg School for poets. The Institute's broad purpose is Communication, the Lear Center to stimulate a cross-diciplinary builds bridges between schools and exchange of ideas. The biweekly disciplines whose faculty study lunches for fellows explore many of aspects of entertainment, media the social, scientific and cultural ideas and culture. Beyond campus, it of the day with a greater variety of bridges the gap between the experience and intellectual outlook entertainment industry and gathered in one room than any given academia, and between them and fellow is likely to experience in the the public. Through scholarship course of his or her daily life. and research; through its fellows, conferences, public events and The Institute aims to be international, publications; and in its attempts to urban and inclusive in its outlook, illuminate and repair the world, the avoiding viewpoints predictably to the Lear Center works to be at the right or left. It seeks to integrate forefront of discussion and practice intellectual life with the active civic life in the field. For more information, of the city, as well as to reflect the please visit www.learcenter.org. diversity that is so palpably a hallmark of Southern California as it continues through the twenty-first century. For more information, please visit www.usc.edu/laih. Participants Kevin Roderick, founder, LAObserved.com Kevin Drum, WashingtonMonthly.com's Political Animal Ana Marie Cox, novelist, Time magazine columnist, former Wonkette Steve Ross, co-director, LA Institute For The Humanities; chairman, history department, USC Marty Kaplan, director, Norman Lear Center, USC Annenberg; moderator 3 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? P A R T I C I P A N T B I O G R A P H I E S Kevin Roderick Kevin Roderick is a former writer and editor at the LA Times, and is now the founder of LAObserved.com, a "Weblog about Los Angeles media, news, politics, books and place." He is also the author of Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles. Kevin Drum Formerly the editor of the liberal blog, CalPundit.com, Kevin Drum is now the writer known as "Political Animal" on WashingtonMonthly.com; he is also the pioneer of the trend known as "Friday cat-blogging." Ana Marie Cox Ana Marie Cox is the original author of Wonkette, an often racy blog of Capitol Hill gossip, politics and policy. She is also the author of the novel Dog Days, a satire of Washington, D.C., as well as an essayist for Time. Steve Ross Steve Ross is co-director of the LA Institute For The Humanities. He is also chairman of the USC history department, where his current research focuses on how films shape ideas about class and power in the 20th century – especially what it means to be working class or middle class in America. Martin Kaplan Martin Kaplan is the director of the Norman Lear Center. A summa cum laude graduate of Harvard, a Marshall Scholar to Cambridge University, and a Stanford Ph.D., he has been an Aspen Institute program officer; a federal education staffer; a Vice President's chief speechwriter; a Washington journalist in print, television, and radio; a deputy Presidential campaign manager; a Disney Studios vice president of motion picture production; and a film and television writer and producer. 4 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? Steve Ross: Welcome. I'm Steve Ross. I'm chairman of the history department here, and also, the co-director of an organization that you probably have never heard of called the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC. It's a town-gown group: half our members are academics; half are from outside the University. But all are people throughout the city interested in issues speaking to the humanities; we have our meetings on campus twice a month. As part of a payback to the university, we've decided to create something called the Dialogue Series which is aimed specifically at undergraduates, and anyone else who would like to participate, the idea We figure that, by this time, being that most of you are busy, and have plenty of events to go to. many of you in this room have your own blogs. We're going to try to create programming of events once a semester that will be fun to go to, things that even though your professors may tell you about, you actually will want to attend because they seem interesting, not because you have to attend. Today is the start of our series, a panel today entitled, "Have Newspapers Replaced Blogs, And Should We Care?" We figure that by this time, many of you in this room probably have your own blogs. What we want to do is have our panelists engage in a preliminary discussion for roughly an hour, maybe a little bit less. As soon as Ana Marie comes, she will join our group, and we will then throw it open to general audience interaction, you'll be able to ask whatever questions you want. Once we end the session, we will break, and you'll have a 5 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? chance to talk with the panelists, and have whatever is left in terms of our refreshments. There are books available if you would like to purchase them, and have them signed by the authors. What I would like to do now is introduce our moderator, Marty Kaplan, who is both a friend and a colleague. Marty is a particularly appropriate person for an event that, again, as I say, we're gearing towards an undergraduate audience, because for those of you who have not decided what you want to do as a major, or even what you want to do when you get out of here, and you find yourself being pestered by your parents, saying, "What are you going to actually do with your life?" then this seminar is for you. If you happen to be majoring in something like English or History, and they're saying, "What are you ever going to do with something like that? Become a History professor?" And you've said, "No," we ask what else could you possibly do, and suggest that we might have some answers for you here today. Marty is a case study of how you can have many different acts in your career at many different stages. He started off a Jersey boy, went to that place in Cambridge where he was a major in Molecular Biology, while at the same time also serving a stint as president of the Harvard Lampoon. But instead of pursuing a career in medicine, he went off to Stanford to get a Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature. From there, he went to work for the Aspen Institute, and then, on to Washington, D.C., where he became the chief speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale in 1984. He then served as Mondale's deputy campaign manager during his presidential bid. Soon after, Marty was lured away from Washington, D.C. by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, and wound up working at Disney for 12 years, both as a studio vice president in live action feature films, and as a writer and producer; during those years, he both wrote and produced The Distinguished Gentleman, and he also adapted Michael Frayne's play, Noises Off. Marty eventually heard a higher calling than Katzenberg and Eisner, and he came to work as the associate dean of USC's Annenberg School of Communication, where he also serves as the 6 THE NORMAN LEAR CENTER Have Blogs Replaced Newspapers, And Should We Care? director and creative genius behind the Norman Lear Center, which studies the impact of entertainment on our society. In his spare time, Marty writes for The New York Times, The Washington Post, the LA Times, Time magazine, U.S. News, & World Report, and for those of your blogmeisters out there, you might have seen his blog on The Huffington Post Website. You can also hear Marty on "Marketplace" and "All Things Considered." I'm delighted that Marty has agreed to serve as our moderator this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming Marty Kaplan. Marty Kaplan: Thank you very much. If that convinces your parents of what you need it to, then let me know how I can convince mine. This room is called the Intellectual Commons. I was reminded of that when I started Googling our topic, and came upon a talk given at Harvard a few weeks ago by an NYU Professor and blogger named Jay Rosen; it was called, "Bloggers Versus Journalists Is So Over." So given that, and because we are in the Intellectual Commons, I'd like to reframe our discussion today as "The Ecology of Information in the Attention Economy." So that's what we're doing, okay? Steve Ross: I'm glad that's clear.