Slow news is coming to the University of Oregon June 24-26. Inspired by slow food, slow news or slow journalism takes “time to do things properly. Instead of desperately trying to beat Twitter to the punch, we return to the values we all want from journalism — context, analysis and expert opinion,” according to the magazine Delayed Gratification.
Conference organizer and UO journalism professor Peter Laufer writes in a 2013 column in The Oregonian that, “We need to decide for ourselves what so-called news is worth our while, not just allow ourselves to be subjected to an endless barrage of unfiltered media assaults. We’re in danger of missing the story because of the noise.” Laufer is also the author of Slow News : A Manifesto for the Critical News Consumer.
Two of the conference keynotes are open to the public. At 3 pm Monday, June 25, Wonkak Kim, UO School of Music and Dance professor, “performs the adagio from Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major and talks about the slow reconstruction of the lost concerto sheet music and the unique clarinet created specifically for playing the concerto,” according to the conference program.
And at 3:30 pm, following the clarinet performance, Logan Molen, the Register-Guard publisher before the local daily was purchased by GateHouse Media, will address the role of slow news in the 24-hour news cycle and slow local news.
Both keynotes are in the EMU’s Lease Crutcher Lewis room on the UO campus. Molen will also discuss slow news earlier that day on OPB’s Think Out Loud.