Dan Gilmore returns to San Jose to encourage young journalists

Dan Gilmore speaks at San Jose State University

SAN JOSE, CALIF. (November 6, 2010) -Providing almost an hour of humor, encouragement, and caution former San Jose Mercury News columnist and author Dan Gillmor talked about using media in a networked age to the delight of hundreds of community college journalism students.


Gillmor provided dozens of examples of how the business of journalism has changed and claims it has never been a better time to choose the profession.


“I’m completely jealous of you. Because you are starting out at the most exciting time ever to be starting out. This is the best time. I can’t believe what amazing possibilities are out there for you. It’s messy and it’s going to be complicated but you can do anything you want to do,” said Gillmor.


Gillmor packed a crowd of over 300 community college journalism students into San Jose State University’s Morris Daily Auditorium as part of the Journalism Association of Community Colleges, 2010 NorCal conference Saturday morning. The opening keynote is used as a topic for several writing and photo contests that are decided under a one-hour deadline while informing the attending students on subjects topical to the profession.


Gillmor is a director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at ASU’s Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication. Gillmor is also a columnist for Salon.com, and his new book “Mediactive” will be released this month.


The speaker went out of his way to tweak the audience about results in the vote to legalize marijuana in the California state last week. “So you want to know why prop 19 failed? Because people my age voted in big numbers and people your age didn’t,” he said.


He discussed changes in how news is created and consumed, detailed the newsprint process where giant machines would create material that was made and distributed to the public and how that model has moved along to one where news is posted and consumers come and get it themselves.


The audience roared with laughter when Gillmor provided a fair use example of a mash up showing the love between former President George W. Bush and former 
U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair though a YouTube post from creators in Sweden.


The speech turned more serious when Gillmor touched on the topics of professional integrity asking his audience to agree with him on examples of what was journalism, what was not and what might be new areas that are not so clear. Citing the value of sources like Wikileaks, and decrying the use of entertainment as a way to inform the public he warned about the manipulation of the viewer. 


“I’m against entertainment masquerading as journalism. Especially when it’s designed not to inform or help us, but designed to pull our strings in ways that ultimately are dangerous,” Gillmor said.