Crowdsource journalism advocate Jay Rosen joins panel on 'Local Turf Wars'

"A highly satisfying failure" is how Wired's Jeff Howe described Jay Rosen & Co's first pro-amateur, open source journalism project, Assignment Zero. The verdict: doing open source journalism is harder than you might think.

But Rosen & Co aren't giving up. They've teamed up with the Huffington Post and launched, Off theBus - "[US Presidential] campaign coverage by people who aren't in the club."

Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University and the author of Press Think, will join in the 7th Journalism Leaders Forum discussion on 16 October entitled, Local Turf Wars: notes from the digital news frontline.

Other confirmed panellists include Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror Regionals, and Emma Hemmingway, author of Into the Newsroom: exploring the digital production of regional television news. Mike Ward, head of the Department of Journalism at UCLan and author of Journalism Online, will chair the forum.

The event is of the first of a series of activities planned to mark 45 years of journalism education at Preston, the oldest programme of its type in England.

The open event, which is the first of three planned for 2007-8, starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building. The 90-minute panel discussion begins at 6pm.

Please RSVP to: leaders[at]ukjournalsm[dot] org. Afterwards, you're invited to link up for a drink at the journalism department's traditional local, the Lamb & Packet . For those who can't make it person, the Forum will again be webcast live too [Log in as a Guest; on the right of the screen].

Trinity Mirror's Neil Benson examines local news at 7th Forum

The folks at the UK's largest newspaper publisher Trinity Mirror have been pretty upbeat lately.

Early in August , the interim financial results for 2007 showed that profits were up, despite below-forecast income from the titles they shed. A few days later, on the back of the announcement of a spate of redesigns and relaunches , regional editorial director Neil Benson hinted that things had gone so well with the rollout of their hyperlocal news project at the Teesside Gazette (also the Press Gazette Regional News Website of Year 2007) that more reverse publishing (online-to-print) products may be in the offing.

Benson is amongst the panelists considering the global impact of the local news business at the 7th Journalism Leaders Forum on 16 October. The event is of the first of a series of activities planned to mark 45 years of journalism education at Preston, the oldest programme of its type in England.

The open event, which is the first of three planned for 2007-8, starts at 5:15pm with a networking reception in the foyer of Greenbank Building. The 90-minute Forum begins at 6pm. Please RSVP to: leaders[at]ukjournalsm[dot] org.

Afterwards, you're invited to link up for a drink at the journalism department's traditional local, the Lamb & Packet . For those who can't make it person, the Forum will again be webcast live too.