Rji-interview-garmer-birnbaum

Larry Birnbaum's notes of his conversation with Amy Garmer:

Wednesday June 20

Amy:

Director Journalism Projects Aspen Institute / Directs work on Knight Commission on info needs of communities in a democracy 18 years with Aspen, previously worked for Sen. Sam Nunn / Policy-focused

How do people in their homes, lives, and communities—and how do communities—create, access, and use information (or not)

Communications and democracy issues

Currently at a Gates Foundation mtg prior to American Library Association on the future of libraries and their role in communities

Role of libraries consistent with Knight Commission work

Knight Commission was interesting in that it started with info needs of communities rather than future of journalism per se

The disruption isn’t to channels or industries or organizations but to all of us and our communities

Larry:

Teaches CS at Northwestern (23 years at NU, previously on faculty at Yale) Background in Artificial Intelligence Works on technology and journalism Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Narrative Science

Do we work with investigative reporters? Yes, we’ve started a project in that space

Recent prototype news commenting system

Both: Job changes every 5 years even though we are still at the same institutions!

How people communicate and share information is changing drastically. Is the pace sustainable? Gaps digital etc will they grow?

From point of view of providers we don’t know; from the point of view of users, the goal is to make things as simple as possible.

Bigger divides and disconnects that journalism and community organizations need to bridge

Fragmentation of audiences – now the question is the technology

Journalism at the community level: Local community vs. other communities of interest

Amy: work that we’ve focused on is the need to redefine and understand relevance – the need for more research – hasn’t been done yet – need new ways of asking questions and getting info to make informed decisions

New products that respond to what people want, succeeds; what you think is cool isn’t.

How to compensate creators – creating new ways of measure success

Fast failure – people don’t know what they want, show them and then see

This requires a tolerance for failure