Study Group with Bob Cohn: The Changing Media World

This study group will explore new realities facing media and politics at a time of business and technological disruption, and against the backdrop of the 2020 presidential campaign. We have today an incumbent who has encouraged violence against reporters and declared journalists to be enemies of the state. We have a media establishment that now routinely calls the president a liar, and whose leading practitioners sometimes turn to social media to decry the commander in chief in terms that, traditionalists say, flout the standards of the profession. 

This conflict comes during a moment of profound transformation in both institutions. Publishers struggle as their long-reliable advertising model collapses, and as social and mobile platforms disrupt all but the most sure-footed media organizations. Politicians, meanwhile, find that digital media can be useful for organizing, fundraising, and message-delivery, but also that freewheeling direct-to-voter channels can be tricky to navigate. How will all this affect the 2020 presidential race, and coverage of it?

Week 2: The changing media world. As digital upstarts (Vice, Vox, Drudge, Huffington Post) brought new tools and new sensibilities to political coverage, legacy media had to learn fast.

Guests: Nancy Gibbs, former Editor, TIME and Adam Moss, former Editor of New York Magazine and The New York Times Magazine.

Location: Institute of Politics (L-163)