Editors’ Note: New updates will be posted periodically during the event. The most recent updates will appear at the top of this page.

The Paly Voice hosted a panel discussion on technology and journalism, moderated by Palo Alto High School alumnus Doreen Bloch. Four panelists participated: VentureBeat Executive Editor Dylan Tweney, Women 2.0 editor in chief Angie Chang, San Jose Mercury News reporter Mike Swift and Palo Alto Patch editor Aaron Selverston.

1:44 p.m. – And we’re done! Thanks for tuning in.

1:44 p.m. – Chang: “There’s probably a way to do it [make news interesting] without being biased.” 

1:42 p.m. – Audience member: “Do you think in the future, more publications will make their own opinions?” 

1:40 p.m. – Selverston: “Big newspapers aren’t going to die. Print is going to die, but those institutions will live on.” 

1:40 p.m. – Audience member: “Why do you think ACTA has gotten so little media coverage as opposed to SOPA or PIPA?” Currently, there is no answer from the panelists. 

1:38 p.m. – Brian Benton, current Editor-in-Chief of Paly newspaper, the Campanile:”Do you think that in the future, we’ll see a disappearance of newspapers or do you think that there are certain publications that are invincible?” 

1:37 p.m. – Selverston: “Part of that legacy of not promoting your personal beliefs is institutional.” 

1:35 p.m. – Chang: “I’m not a journalist per se, so I think that having an opinion is a great thing…” Bloch says that blogging as a great place for opinion. 

1:34 p.m. – Tweney: “You try to seek the truth and you don’t try to give equal time to both sides if one side is wrong…Your first allegiance is to the facts.” 

1:32 p.m. – Swift: “Clearly, social media is going to be a major driver of eyeballs going forward.” 

1:31 p.m. – David Lim, sports editor on the Paly Voice: “How do you see the online community influencing what journalists cover going forward?” 

1:29 p.m. – Swift: “So when I started in journalism, the real ethic, the real value was to try to be objective…I think the goal of trying to be objective is not wrong.” 

1:28 p.m. – Selverston: “There’s also the economic answer.” 

1:27 p.m. – Aaron Zelinger, a Paly student and current Editor-in-Chief of the Paly Voice: “What is the changing role of fun, biased, objective journalism in the modern age and how does that reflect the shift onto the internet…” 

1:27 p.m. – Bloch: “Let’s turn it over to the audience.” 

1:25 p.m. – Tweney: “Most news sites aren’t designed right now. They’re engineered…They’re not beautiful to look at. They’re loaded with links…and ads, and they’re just engineered for reading very short, a certain type of content.” 

1:23 p.m. – The panelists start to discuss design. 

1:21 p.m. – Tweney: “I think one of the reasons that numbers are so low for women…is because a lot of women feel like they won’t get a fair shake…and they also feel like they know the odds are stacked against them. But I think that that’s starting to change…They [venture companies] don’t want to shut themselves off to a giant pool of talent just because there’s this perception that they are not friendly to women.” 

1:19 p.m. – Chang: “Women on general seem to be shyer than men at touting our accomplishments…There’s a lot of opportunity for women. There’s a huge market. We’re known as consumers…”

1:17 p.m. – Tweney: “[Recently], it became cool to be  an entrepreneur. These guys were like nerds in high school, and they’re like masters of the universe now…It’s [entrepreneurship] a powerful force for creativity and creating something new, and the conditions are really favorable for entrepreneurship right now.” 

1:15 p.m. – Bloch moves onto entrepreneurship. 

1:15 p.m. – Swift: “Social media in general is a critically important tool for politicians…” 

1:13 p.m. – Selverston: “Aside from the lobbying, does that [Obama coming to Palo Alto and visiting Google] court any special kind of favors?” 

1:07 p.m. – Bloch: “How many people went to Wikipedia on the day it was shut down? I want to talk about that…Can you tell us from a high level the deal with PIPA and SOPA…and your thoughts on it?” 

1:06 p.m. – Swift: “Clearly, people are going to see a very personalized view of what’s happening online.”

1:04 p.m. – Bloch: “How many people have Facebook? How many people are aware that the Facebook that you’re looking at is totally different from everyone else here?” 

1:04 p.m. – Chang encourages people to start writing and submitting content. 

1:03 p.m. – Chang: “How many of you want to be journalists?”

12:59 p.m.: Selverston: “I think that in the next five years, we’ll be watching TV with our friends virtually.” 

12:58 p.m. – Tweney: “Whatever we do has to take into account the reality that you know lots of people are out there, and everybody has a voice now. I think that’s sort of the starting point for journalism now in many ways, that everybody has a voice, but that’s not the end of the story. There’s still some crafts…ethics, fact-checking and work that has to go on top of that.” 

12:57 p.m. – Swift: “We’re looking at a lot of innovative things. We hope they will be innovative. Things like community journalism labs where we would do livestreaming of news meeting that people could tune in and actually watch decisions being made about the day’s coverage. Things like the mobile news lab that would go out into the community and allow community members to interface with our journalists. Up until now, newspapers have survived several waves of technology…there’s now a realization that it’s adapt or die for newspapers in the near future.” 

12:55 p.m. – Bloch: “I want to start more on the journalism side, and then we’ll move our way to the technology side.” 

12:52 p.m. – Tweney: “If you bring something new onto the web, through talking to people or talking on the phone – whatever – people will connect to that…and readers will come. I don’t know – I think that we’ve kind of turned a corner.” 

12:50 p.m. – Tweney: “There’s something very, very satisfying about seeing your name in print…There’s an immediacy and a speed and a lack of overhead to online [journalism] that I love.” 

12:47 p.m. – Tweney: “As the internet grew, then social networking starting growing up around it and mobile devices, and basically, it got too fascinating to look away.”

12:45 p.m. – Selverston: “I’m here reporting on news in and about Palo Alto, but also managing a news website, and I think Patch represents one of the many new paths journalism is taking.”

12:37 p.m. – Swift: “Around 1990, I started what was called “stringing” at the time…and just found that I loved it, and I had a great affinity for it. I would say that there are maybe two important qualifications for journalism: one would be a hungry mind, curiousity, and the other would be a hatred of secrets.”

12:34 p.m. – Bloch introduces the panelists: Mike Swift, a staff writer on The Mercury News, Aaron Selverston, an editor at Palo Alto Patch, Dylan Tweney, the executive editor of VentureBeat and Angie Chang, the editor-in-chief at Women 2.0. 

12:34 p.m. – Bloch: “Personally, I’m here to learn a ton from our panelists…It’s an incredible, stellar, stellar group.” 

12:31 p.m. – Palo Alto High School webjournalism adviser Paul Kandell starts the panel discussion by introducing the moderator, Doreen Bloch, and the Paly alumni in the room, including Verde and the Paly Voice members.