The McGraw Symposium

From Fake News to Virtual Reality: Journalism in the Age of Trump 

Rarely has the news media faced such an array of challenges. Amidst allegations of “fake news” and media bias, attacks on the freedom of the press – and sometimes, on journalists themselves – have been a feature of the most acrimonious relationship between the media and the Administration in a generation.

Trust in the media is increasingly split along partisan lines, spurring heated debate about the proper role of journalism. At the same time, the pace of digital change continues to intensify, as newsrooms double down on video and experiment with new tools such as bots and virtual reality while dealing with continuing financial pressures.

Those are among the topics we covered at the fourth annual McGraw Symposium at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Top editors Gerard Baker, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Sally Buzbee, executive editor of the Associated Press, Alan Murray, chief content officer of Time Inc., and Josh Tyrangiel, executive vice president of Vice News joined us to discuss the state of the industry. We talked about how they’re tackling these challenges, transforming their newsrooms and, perhaps most important, where they see opportunities ahead despite the media tumult.

The McGraw Symposium was held on Oct. 12, 2017 at the Newmark J-School, in conjunction with the annual fall conference of the Society for Business Editors and Writers.

Each year, the McGraw Symposium draws roughly 200 top business editors and reporters from major publications and digital sites in New York and around the country. Previous speakers including Joanne Lipman, chief content officer of Gannett, Nikhil Deogun, editor-in-chief of CNBC Business News, and Andy Serwer, editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance have joined us to discuss the changes they’re putting in place to meet the challenges of the digital environment, while the inaugural event in 2014 focused on the rise of digital native news sites. Henry Blodget, CEO and editor-in-chief of Business Insider, Kevin Delaney, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Quartz, and Walt Mossberg, co-executive editor of Recode explored how the new sites are reshaping business journalism.