Top media executive in the age of information overload

The media industry is struggling to find new business models in the digital age. Will anyone pay for content in the future? What will be the relationship between the media companies, the advertisers and the readers/users? What is journalism 2.0? Will the social networking entrepreneurs replace the role of the publishers? We will have several discussions on these topics at SIME. To nourish these discussions we are proud to include Michael Oreskes, editor in chief at the International Herald Tribune, in the agenda. Before joining the IHT, Michael was the deputy managing editor of The New York Times.

To give you an idea of Micheal Oreskes view on the role of journalism, here is an excerpt from his opening remarks in the media panel in Davos 2007.

"... living in the digital age is like standing at the bottom of a grain elevator as they pour in the wheat.

Our audiences are literally drowning in information, unrefined wheat and chaff and all the muck raked up with the harvest…

You can call this the digital age, or the internet age, or the information age…to a lot of people it must seem like the age of information overload. At first that overload seems like a problem to us, perhaps a fatal problem, but I suggest it is in fact our opportunity. Indeed, information overload is THE opportunity that we as journalists cannot afford to miss. For our own sakes and for the sake of the society that needs what we journalists do. It is the opportunity to reshape what we do so it survives well into the future.. And survival, it wont surprise any of you to hear, really is at stake".