Journalism in the Age of WikiLeaks

That's the title of a panel discussion at 6:30 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 24) at CNET in San Francisco, which is co-sponsoring the event along with the Society of Professional Journalists-NorCal.

Panelists include:

• Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent, CNET
• Steve Proctor, managing editor, San Francisco Chronicle
• Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief, Wired.com
• Burt Herman, Hacks & Hackers
• Jalal Ghazi, New America Media
• Moderator: E.B. Boyd, FastCompany.com and board member, SPJ-NorCal

Here's SPJ's description of the discussion:

The advent of third-party players like WikiLeaks is forcing editors to rethink traditional editorial practices. Historically, editors had as much time as they needed to study leaked documents. But in an age when anyone can access a (digital) printing press, editors no longer can count on controlling the timetable. 

While the Washington Post took two years to report “Top Secret America,” the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel were given a mere three weeks to decide how to handle over 90,000 confidential documents on Afghanistan. (And only a little more to consider the handling of the subsequent documents on Iraq and the State Department cables.) 

Join us as we discuss the challenges journalists face in the current environment, and consider questions like: How should news organizations handle situations like the ones the New York Times et al faced with WikiLeaks? And what's the role of professional news organizations when anyone can publish the kind of information that previously was only the purview of journalism? And what do you think of how the New York Times handled WikiLeaks? (See Bill Keller's "Dealing with Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets".)

Sign up here: spj-wikileaks-panel.eventbrite.com/