Havel at Columbia

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Panel

Journalism and Citizenship

Moderated by Nicholas Lemann Nov 21 7:00pm Journalism

Politics and the Internet: is the Web Revolutionary?

With

Sheila Coronel
Hugh Hewitt
Rebecca MacKinnon

Nicholas Lemann was born and raised in New Orleans, and graduated from Harvard College where he served as President of the Harvard Crimson . He has worked at The Washington Post , The Atlantic Monthly , and The New Yorker , and is now Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He has published five books, most recently Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War ; The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy , which helped lead to a major reform of the SAT ; and the award-winning The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America . He has written widely for such publications as The New York Times , The New York Review of Books , The New Republic , Slate , and American Heritage ; worked in documentary television including Frontline and the BBC ; and lectured at many universities. Lemann continues to write for The New Yorker , and serves on the boards of directors of the Authors Guild, the Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center, and the Society of American Historians, and is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Rebecca MacKinnon is a veteran journalist who has embraced the new world of weblogs and participatory media. A Berkman fellow and Fulbright scholar, MacKinnon is a Harvard graduate. She is co-founder with Berkman fellow Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online, an international online citizens' media project housed at the Berkman Center. MacKinnon worked for CNN in Northeast Asia for over a decade, serving as CNN' s Beijing Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 1998-2001 and as Tokyo Bureau Chief and Correspondent from 2001-03. She has also covered major news events in North and South Korea, Pakistan, and the Philippines, and worked as a freelance journalist for many publications including Newsweek. She has written and spoken extensively about the future of global participatory media and was primary organizer of the 2005 Blogging, Journalism, and Credibility conference at Harvard. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Rebecca also speaks and writes frequently on issues related to the internet in China. Her personal weblog is www.RConversation.com .

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show heard in more than 70 cities nationwide, and a Professor of Law at Chapman University Law School, where he teaches Constitutional Law. He is the author of Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World as well as the New York Times best selling author of If It's Not Close , They Can't Cheat . He has written 4 other books. Hewitt has received 3 Emmys during his decade of work as co-host of the PBS Los Angeles affiliate KCET' s nightly news and public affairs show Life & Times. He is a weekly columnist for The Daily Standard, the online edition of The Weekly Standard. He can be reached at hugh@hughhewitt.com .

Sheila Coronel is the Director of Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia. She began reporting in 1982 on the staff of Philippine Panorama writing about human rights abuses by the Marcos regime, the growing democratic movement, and the election of Corazon Aquino as president. She later joined the staff of The Manila Times as a political reporter, and wrote special reports for The Manila Chronicle . As a stringer for The New York Times and The Guardian (London), she covered seven attempted coups d'etats against the Aquino government. In 1989, Sheila and her colleagues founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) to promote investigative reporting. Under Coronel's leadership, the Center became the premier investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia. She is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including Coups, Cults & Cannibals, a collection of reportage ; The Rulemakers: How the Wealthy and Well-born Dominate Congress ; and Pork and other Perks: Corruption and Governance in the Philippines. She has received numerous awards and widespread recognition of her work.

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