Program 2009

The following sessions was presented in English at the Nordic Media Festival in 2009:

When Louis met...

With his deceptively unassuming manner and politely persistent questioning, Louis Theroux has made a name for himself by making documentaries that get access to and investigate closed-off and sometimes dangerous worlds far removed from the mainstream. He’s spent time inside San Quentin prison, on the sets of porn movies in Los Angeles, with the high rollers at a top Las Vegas casino, and riding along with the private security industry in high-crime Johannesburg.

By charming his subjects, he’s able to show from the inside what really goes on in places most of us never venture, offering rounded portraits of the inhabitants and resisting easy judgements. He creates a mood where the people he meets relax, open up and reveal more than they would have in a more common interview setting, offering a nuanced picture of worlds in which people do questionable things for very human reasons. Unafraid of self-exposure himself, he often uses his own participation to illuminate the issues at hand – having his own fat removed to reveal the Beverly Hills beauty industry and going on a hunt in South Africa to understand the ethics of game farming.

Louis Theroux will share with us how he chooses his stories, why he approaches them the way he does, and the pitfalls of getting intimate with people whose worlds are utterly alien to his own. He will also share anecdotes from his ten years of programme-making and show us examples of his work. 

Speaker: Louis Theroux, journalist, BBC / Freelance

Christina Lamb

British Christina Lamb has been a foreign correspondent for more than 20 years since an unexpected wedding invitation ended up with her moving to Peshawar at the age of 21. Her reports of travelling in and out of Afghanistan with the mujaheddin fighting the Soviet occupation saw her named Young Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. Since then she has won numerous awards and today commands enormous respect and has built an incredible worldwide network.

Lamb was the first journalist to get access to the transcripts of the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack. She has travelled repeatedly undercover to Zimbabwe despite being declared an enemy of the state by President Robert Mugabe. In 2006 she narrowly avoided being killed in a Taliban ambush in Helmand. She was a close friend of Benazir Bhutto and was on her bus when it was bombed in Karachi in October 2007. 136 were killed and 450 injured but Bhutto survived.

Two months later Benazir Bhutto was assassinated by a suicide bomber. A few days after the assassination Lamb received a Christmas card in the mail from Bhutto with wishes for a peaceful new year…

Speaker: Christina Lamb, journalist, Sunday Times.

TV content in times of recession

All business areas are affected by the international financial breakdown. But in addition to structural changes, the recession also forces the media industry to devlop new ideas of content. What kind of content do producers and distributors have in their pipelines when it comes to new TV formats? Will there be a wave of escapism, piles of programming on personal economy, will we see old and secure hits recycled?

Virginia Mousler, CEO of The Wit, follows new developments in global TV formats closer than anybody. In Bergen she will screen fresh examples from new born TV-formats created in the shadows of the recession.

Speaker: Virginia Mouseler, Chief Executive Officer, The Wit

Multimedial creativity in The New York Times

News consumers world wide have been astonished by the creativity and knowledge of the New York Times´ multi media department. The paper has in latter years made a leap into e new era. The results can be experienced every day at nytimes.com, a front runner in developing new journalistic story telling. The creative head of the New York Times, Andrew DeVigal, comes to Bergen to show and tell how the New York Times put new technology into practical use.

Speaker: Andrew DeVigal, Multimedia Editor, The New York Times

LazyTown

For almost two decades LazyTown‘s founder and star, Magnus Scheving, developed the philosophy that created LazyTown. The hit TV show is now aired in 120 countries all around the world.

LazyTown motivates millions around the world with its unique proposition, inspiring children to be active and healthy, not by preaching, but by being fun and exciting. LazyTown is truly the brand where everyone wins! It appeals equally to boys and girls, parents like it and society benefits from its healthy message.

In this session you will hear the whole story behind LazyTown’s success, how it started and how Magnus was able to build up a successful international brand that inspires children all over the world.

Speaker: Magnus Scheving, creator and actor, LazyTown Entertainment

The Guardian: Making Newspapers for the 21. century

As all other media companies, The Guardian is struggling with the effects of the financial crisis, decline in print numbers and changes in the readership pattern. Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, will tell us what he is doing to make sure his company survives this change in media habits.

Speaker: Alan Rusbridger, Editor, The Guardian

Living journalism - in Iraq

When the Iraq war was at its most intense, the journalist and filmmaker Deborah Scranton, gave American soldiers video cameras to take with them into combat. She asked them to film as much as they possible could, and the result was the award winning documentary “The War Tapes”. Scranton herself was not present in Iraq, but rarely has a journalist managed to get so close the horrors of war. Scrantons philosophy of “living journalism” challenges the traditional demands for journalistic objectivity."It’s about being human first, and journalist and filmmaker second", she says.In 2008 Scranton released another film “Bad Voodoo’s War”, this one also to raving reviews.

Speaker: Deborah Scranton, filmmaker & journalist, Clover & a Bee Films

Everyblock.com

Adrian Holovaty is a journalist, musician and web developer from Chicago. With his skills in programming, journalistic method and creativity, Holovaty has contributed to the on line revolution of combining existing databases with maps to create completely new information channels. Holovaty is the founder of everyblock.com, a web site gathering public information and making it clickable on a city map. This way the users can easily find the nearest place licensed to sell alcohol, see how many crimes have been reported from a specific area or check the planning departments building approvals, amongst others. On everyblock.com you can now check out the local information via maps of 11 cities across the United States. Holovatys is probably the best-known representative of this new school called “journalism via computer programming”.
 

Speaker: Adrian Holovaty, creator, everyblock.com

Trends in Newspaper Design

One of the most recognized newspaper designers in the world reveals his top tips at the Nordic Media Festival. Javier Errea has made a living out of sprucing up tired newspapers simply by giving them a total design makeover. A newspaper will not obtain a high print number on excellent content alone.

How the content is presented is equally important. The combination between content and design creates the brand and is crucial for the reading experience. Scandinavian newspaper design is internationally acclaimed, but there is always room for improvement. What can our newspapers learn from international publications? What are the next big trends in newspaper design? What newspaper does Errea dream of giving an extreme makeover? Errea will also tell what we do right in Scandinavia, a confidence boost in these times of recession.

Speaker: Javier Errea, Designer, Errea Communication

Shock-doc: Balancing shock and fascination

We have all seen them; the documentaries about children with the sensational syndromes and strange faces. The mermaid girl. The guy that gave birth to his own brother. These shocking documentaries let us enter into a world of human interest stories that balance on a fine line between repulsion and fascination. Meet Vivian McGrath, known for her Shock Docs, and find out where this line is – if it all exists?

Speaker: Vivian  McGrath, Executive Producer, Gecko Productions

The Internet's worst enemy

The internet has provided a tsunami of amateurism destroying both culture and newspublishing, choking the public with indifferent information. At least according to Andrew Keen. His first book "The cult of the amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture" has been translated into 15 languages and is an international hit, giving a strong critique of the enthusiasm surrounding user generated content, peer production, and other Web 2.0-related phenomena.

Among Keen's accusation is that web 2.0 destroys professional publishing and to journalists and editors he asks: why don't you bother giving away your profession to creative amateurs when doctors won't do that? Andrew Keen is an intelligent and humorous provocative opposition to the digital optimism of today. On stage he will be challenged by the CEO of VG Nett, Jo Christian Oterhals.

Speaker: Andrew Keen

What can traditional media learn from the adult entertainment industry?

-Nothing, you might snort angrily, but keep in mind that with many new media channels, Adult Entertainment has a track record of successfully identifying many of the most common commercial models which are later adopted by mainstream media and entertainment. It also has a tendency to ‘fair well’ during economic crisis and claims to be worth more than 12 billion dollars a year.

Julia Dimambro, CEO of Cherry Media Holdings launched the awardwinning Mobile internet portal Cherrysauce in 2003 (ME Awards, Best Adult Services Company 2006). She speaks of how the adult entertainment business historically has developed on new platforms, and gives useful tips as to how you make consumers find your business, how to make them stay, spend and return. "It is the way in which we interact with and engage consumers that impacts earnings & customer experience – not just WHAT content we push them that is the key right now“, says Julia Dimambro.

Speaker: Julia Dimambro, Managing Director, Cherry Media

The greatest media scam of all times?

It is a pleasure to welcome Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times to Bergen! His book, "CURVEBALL: Spies, Lies, and the Con Man Who Caused a War," (published in Norway as "Kodenavn Curveball") is a chilling expose of the worst intelligence failure in CIA history. It tells the story of an Iraqi refugee to Germany who became the single most important source for the CIA and President George Bush as they prepared to invade Iraq.

Given the codename Curveball, the Iraqi claimed he had run a secret program for Saddam Hussein to build terrifying biological weapons capable of killing millions. Secretary of State Colin Powell quoted Curveball at the United Nations Security Council, and President Bush cited him in his State of the Union speech.

But the CIA never confirmed the information, never vetted his background, had not met him - and didn't even know his name. In the end, Curveball was a complete fraud who spun a story that the White House wanted to hear. Bob's investigative reporting in the Los Angeles Times first exposed this scandal, which was later confirmed in official U.S. investigations.

Speaker: Bob Drogin, Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times

Skins

Love original, fun drama? Join Skins creator Bryan Elsley and learn about the innovative writing processes, describing how writers are nurtured and developed, revealing Skins filming philosophy and the secrets of their drama production processes and values. Skins is written by a diverse combination of teenagers, comedians, school kids and screenwriters - with an average age of just 22!

Speaker: Bryan Elsley, Creator, Skins

The journalist journalists hate

Over the last 20 years the Australian national broadcaster's Media Watch has developed from a media review into a program that applies the tools of investigative journalism to journalism itself and Peter McEvoy, the program's longest serving head producer, was integral to that transformation.

In a industry renowned for "thin skin" Media Watch criticises everyone, including its managers and colleagues and Media Watch has turned a unique combination of investigation, analysis and humour into popular and entertaining weekly television.

Peter McEvoy will talk about the risks and the benefits of biting the hand that feeds you and show clips from some of the disclosures that have made the programme essential but anxious viewing for the Australian media and journalists. As the Media Watch motto says - everyone loves it until they're on it.

Speaker: Peter McEvoy, Executive Producer, ABC Television

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