MUMBAI: In 1990, CNN had been on-air for a only a decade, Netscape and the Web revolution was five years away, newspaper readership in America was 14 per cent higher than it is today and the Fairness Doctrine for radio and television had been dead for three years.
The next 15 years brought many surprises for the American media industry. And in an effort to prepare the industry for the next 15 years, the Asian American Journalists Association (Aaja) is convening a leadership summit Vision 2020.
The event takes place from 19-20 October 2005 at The Aspen Institute in Colorado. The summit will be part of a four-day gathering to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Aaja's Executive Leadership Programme. This leadership development programme has since graduated 288 mid-career Asian American Pacific Islander journalists.
Media executives, futurists, business leaders and philanthropists will look at the technology that will be used to distribute information, business practices of the future, and the impact of both on society and social justice issues. Summit participants will also look at audiences, their buying habits and information needs in the year 2020.
Ideas from the summit will be distilled into a white paper and distributed to summit participants and media companies.
Summit speakers will include Community Technology Foundation of California CEO Tessie Guillermo, Viacom Cable Networks, Film and Publishing executive VP research and planning Betsy Frank and ESPN Mobile senior VP Manish Jha.
Representatives from some of Amwerica's philanthropic organisations will also attend the program and explore potential synergies between media, business and philanthropy.
Aaja is a non-profit professional and educational organisation with more than 2,300 members today. Founded in 1981, Aaja states that it has been at the forefront of change in the journalism industry. Its mission is to encourage Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) to enter the ranks of journalism, to work for fair and accurate coverage of AAPIs, and to increase the number of AAPI journalists and news managers in the industry.
