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Dan Rather goes old-school on SXSW fest goers
Maybe it’ll play better on the Internet …
Dan Rather appeared as a keynote speaker at South by Southwest Interactive on Monday in a nearly full ballroom at the Hilton Austin downtown. Though the room was packed with attentive attendees, things got off to a bad start when interviewer Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake.com had to repeat her first question twice because of lousy acoustics. The question, in contrast to the forward-looking festival, was about Richard Nixon.
The cozy-chair interview format did not flatter Rather: Though he took partial blame for the mainstream media’s loss of credibility in the past few years (“What we need in journalsm is a spine transplant,” he said to applause), much of the old-school journalism he preached (ethic, accountability, independence) went only so far with the bloggers, programmers and new-media evangelists. Ten minutes before the keynote ended, audience members started streaming out. By the time the last audience question was asked, about half the crowd was gone.
Rather will be in town tonight for a live broadcast from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library for “Dan Rather Reports” on the HDNet channel. The town-hall meeting will focus on immigration and will include a taped interview with LBJ biographer Robert Caro. Appearing live will be film producer Elizabeth Avellán, Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Business, Lisa Graybill of the ACLU of Texas and University of Texas professor Ricardo Ainslie.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment | Categories: interactive
Comments
By B
March 13, 2007 10:00 AM | Link to this
more info on live broadcast from LBJ, please. Time, date(tonight 12, or tonight 13?) how to attend? badges, other? Thanks
By Eske
March 13, 2007 1:34 PM | Link to this
I recently saw Dan Rather on a Frontline report about the direction of newspapers and journalism in a new-media world. The guy knows what he’s talking about…my guess is that all the people who left either couldn’t hear because of the accoustics or regarded things like ethics and accountability as a bunch of funny old-man talk. What a shame.