A timely start to the International Symposium on Online Journalism at UT Austin with Vivian Schiller, ex-president/CEO of NPR. While quoting some of the bad news in the annual State of the Media report for 2011, Schiller outlined seven reasons to be cheerful: Conditions finally right to give paywalls a fair shake. What has changed, she said is that while scale still matters, brand is back. The other thing is that you

I’m off to Austin, Texas, for the 2008 International Online Journalism Symposium to present a paper on the BBC’s blogging strategy during the Saturday session. There is a promising line-up and some 200 scholars, professional journalists and media executives have registered for the event. If you can’t make it, students will be live blogging the sessions using CoverLive, and I will also be writing about the sessions. New this year

The schedule for the forthcoming International Symposium on Online Journalism is now available online and it has a great range of speakers. The conference, held 4-5 April at the University of Texas at Austin, is unique in bringing both professionals and academics to discuss where journalism is going. But it also stands out for its international approach, with speakers from Brazil, Britain, Colombia, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and the UAE. For