Around the world, democracy is under attack, with news organizations and journalists increasingly facing persecution and restrictions on their work as regimes hostile to journalism target press freedom.
The practice of independent journalism in countries where democracy is in jeopardy will be the topic of discussion for the first panel on Day 2 of the 26th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), which will be held online and at the University of Texas at Austin, March 27-28, 2025. Registration is still open, so be sure to snag your tickets before space fills up!
Journalists from El Salvador, Hungary, India and Turkey, will discuss threats to the press in those countries and global attacks on democracy during the Friday, March 28, panel, “Doing journalism in countries with democracies on the decline.”
Ann Marie Lipinski, curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, will chair the panel, which features Carlos Dada, co-founder and director of Salvadoran digital-native outlet El Faro; Turkish journalist Gülsin Harman; Arfa Khanum, senior editor of multilingual news site The Wire of India; and András Pethő, co-founder, editor and executive director of Hungarian investigative journalism center Direkt36.
Day 2 continues with a panel on challenges covering the second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. Just two months into the second term that has seen sweeping changes in how the government is run, including in relation to the press, correspondents who work in Washington, D.C. will discuss how they are reporting on all of it. Evan Smith, co-founder of The Texas Tribune and senior advisor of the Emerson Collective, will chair this panel featuring Michael C. Bender, political correspondent of The New York Times; Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and chief Playbook correspondent and White House correspondent at Politico; and Ashley Parker, staff writer at The Atlantic.
Katherine Maher, president & CEO of National Public Radio (NPR), will deliver the first keynote address of the day, speaking with session chair Sonal Shah, CEO of The Texas Tribune. The second keynote address of Day 2 comes from Terry Tang, executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, who will converse with session chair Evan Smith.
Other panels rounding out the second day of ISOJ include:
Day 2 also includes a research breakfast on agenda-setting and online journalism, with a tribute to late UT Austin Professor Max McCombs, a pioneer in research on the agenda-setting role of mass communication. Registration is required for this session, which will kick off with a tribute to McCombs featuring his UT Austin Moody College of Communication colleagues Paula M. Poindexter, School of Journalism & Media professor; Tom Johnson, Amon G. Carter Jr. Centennial Professor in the School of Journalism & Media; Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud, professor in the Department of Communication Studies and director of the Center for Media Engagement; and Stephen D. Reese, Jesse H. Jones Professor of Journalism. Session chair and research presenter Sebastián Valenzuela, one of McCombs’ former students and an associate professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, will also reflect on McCombs’ scholarly legacy as part of the tribute before transitioning to research presentations from panelists Teresa Correa, professor at Diego Portales University of Chile; Vanessa de Macedo Higgins Joyce, professor at Texas State University; and Zhi Lin, graduate student at UT Austin.
The full program and list of speakers for the 26th ISOJ is available at isoj.org. You can read more about Day 1 sessions here. Register to attend in-person or online here.
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