Office of the President Lee C. Bollinger: 2009 Commencement Address - The Diigo Meta page

• 23 May 09
  

  Yule Heibel

  Lee C. Bollinger's commencement address to the 2009 Columbia U. graduating class, with a special focus on globalization and freedom of the press/ media: "...the very same technology - the Internet - that is making global communication so pervasive - is simultaneously undermining the financial model of the traditional press, as we've known it."
  
  Many great insights. Some excerpts:
  QUOTE
  ...you have been here at a pivotal moment in history. You came in texting and you're going out with a twitter. And regardless of whether you're a fan of digital downloads or old fashioned ink on paper, while you've been here you've seen the value of dialogue, and of access to timely, credible, independently generated information and ideas. In August, 2005, just as many of you were settling into your first semester here, Hurricane Katrina was ravaging the city of New Orleans, amid accusations of gross government mismanagement and misinformation. Your Columbia years have coincided with two brutal and still unfinished wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - shaped by our own government's far too extensive control over information. You will tell your children about the unprecedented economic crisis that erupted during your time here - a global event fueled by inadequate disclosures and regulation. From the standpoint of our ability to acquire a full understanding of things that matter, we clearly have a long way to go before we can rest.
  
  Meanwhile, you have been witness to and strengthened by participating in the process of vigorous open debate - on issues such as gay marriage, the conflict in the Middle East, and climate change. And you have played a role in one of the most exciting political campaigns in American history - a campaign waged like never before through online media and social networking.
  
  Through it all, you have lived in the most privileged intellectual environment on the planet, perhaps of all time. Nothing compares to this - to the freedom you have felt - and possibly taken for granted - to consider every idea and t

  columbia_university lee_bollinger commencement_speech media journalism press

• 21 May 09
  

  Jordan Kent

  newspapers Journalism commencement

• 

  Taryn .

  [lots of fluff]
  No one should take this development lightly. As Walter Lippmann wrote about the shortcomings of the press in its coverage of the First World War, a crisis of journalism is a crisis of democracy. No one should assume that the institutions

  commencement speech 2009 transcript journalism censorship

  • we can no longer expect the free
    market to produce institutions that actually play a quasi-public role, as
    universities do or the press does as our "Fourth Branch" of government.  Eventually, there will have to be new sources
    of funding for the press, other than through the private market.  For now, oddly, a significant part of our
    world news comes through the BBC, and therefore courtesy of British citizens.  (Meanwhile, other government-supported
    broadcasters, from China's
    CCTV to Al Jazeera English, are developing their own global presence.)  We have yet to realize that we will need to
    compete for our ideas in the global marketplace of ideas.

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