In Aspen ASPEN ART MUSEUM
SUMMER 2024 EDITION
29
But otherwise, my advice is to hook yourself up to whatever nonprot you can nd that’s got some funding and just start investigating. Find out some- thing the world needs to know, and get it out somehow, because that’s the way to make a career. I think we’re in a transitional moment, because people are begin- ning to get very agitated about a world without credible journalism. The world of deep fakes and the whole informa- tion chaos is so intense that it’s actually beginning to scare people. There was a massive grant of $500 million, from the MacArthur Foundation, toward supporting journalism. The people with funds are beginning to understand. EM A note of hope. TB Yes, a note of hope. Aspen Ideas: I’ve called it, Bright Minds for Dark Times. These are dark times, but there are bright minds. Aspen is the bulwark against this chaos I’m talking about. Aspen is a place of creativity, intelligence, civility and civilization, which is what we all lack. It is a week where you can spend time refreshing your spirit and soul.
EM There is also the need to both receive funding from certain establish- ments, corporations or institutions, but also retain sucient editorial indepen- dence to criticize those same entities. TB Exactly. They get by through winning over someone with a great deal of money, and suddenly they can’t make any criticisms. Who owns the press is one of the other great questions. Reuters is one of the great inde- pendent, investigative journalism organizations. It’s an extraordinary newsroom—not ashy, but they are winning prizes constantly. Truth Tellers is not an event that mourns the end of journalism by any means. We’re showcasing new forms that are brilliant, like Bellingcat, Forbidden Stories, and Paul Radu and the Orga- nized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, for instance. I think it’s incredibly important that we learn about new forms and see how we can grow journalism with new tools, platforms and founders. EM Do you have any advice for young journalists starting out in the eld? TB The second strand I launched with my foundation is an annual early-career Global Fellowship in Investigative Journalism. The fellow spends six to eight months working in the Reuters newsroom, mentored by a terric journalist.
very deep history of intellectual debate, with people of stature—it has acquired a kind of wonderful halo. Aspen stands for intelligence, humanity and conversation. This is the 20th festival—that’s a very deep pedigree. Now, they want to change direction a bit, but still work with those great bones. There are many people who’ve come to Aspen for years and they’ll all still be there, but also some fresh faces, like Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Talking with the tech people, many of them are not as aware of what Aspen stands for and it’s great to remind them that Steve Jobs famously attended the Aspen Institute when it was a design festival, a long time back. These people don’t actually need the stage of Aspen, and yet they want to be there. EM In 2023, in partnership with Reuters and Durham University, you hosted Truth Tellers in London, the inaugural Sir Harry Evans Global Summit in Investigative Journalism in honor of your late husband. There are a lot of remarkable journalists in your lineup for Aspen and I imagine some overlap with Truth Tellers. What were your intentions behind starting that initiative? And what do you hope it can achieve in what feels like a particularly fraught moment? TB As an editor and writer, I’m a passionate believer in serious
journalism. I feel we’re at a desperate moment, a crossroads where credible news outlets are collapsing every day. It’s really a frightening time. And we’re living in a very dangerous world. So many journalists have died in the last 12 months in wars or been thrown into prison, like Evan Gershkovich in Russia. It is an increasingly unsafe environment for the truth tellers, the brave witnesses. I think it’s very important to pause and valorize jour- nalists, single out people who are doing great work, hear them talk and give them scope to meet other journalists, because many feel very isolated. In Aspen, we’re also going to have a discussion about the threats to journalism. No one can quite gure out how to sustain it. There is corporate ravaging by greedy hedge funds who buy news platforms and then strip everything out of them. Then there are really timid corporates who also take over and are afraid of being sued, so they never want to do anything challenging or good. Then you’ve also got digital disruption, where every- thing is getting stolen and ripped o. So, what are the new business models? Nonprot? Subscription? There are many ways to try to make money out of it somehow, but it’s denitely one of our great challenges. How do we sustain the truth tellers, the witnesses, the guardians of our society?
Above Tina Brown poses for a portrait shoot for Harper’s Bazaar, New York, 2007. Photograph: Lorenzo Agius/Contour and Getty Images
Evan Mott is a writer, editor and critic. He lives in London, UK.
Tina Brown is an award-winning journalist, editor and author. She is the guest curator of the 20th annual Aspen Ideas Festival. She lives in New York.
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online