Panel: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York: Jane Jacobs and an Activist Press

7:25 PM EDT on September 13, 2007

Jane Jacobs and other activists were canny media strategists, and they worked both mainstream and alternative outlets to spread their messages, affect public perception and try to create both community and change. Today, blogging and other virtual forms of journalism are being used to greater and lesser effect by activists, developers and others trying to shape the debate over the city's future.

This panel will consider the lineage of activist journalism, from pamphletting and the early Village Voice to today’s online investigative journalism and community organizing.

Sewell Chan, The New York Times — moderator
Gay Talese, author
Norman Oder, Atlantic Yards Report
Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, El Diario
Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake.com

Aaron Donovan

Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.

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