The Crisis in Journalism. This conference focuses on the recent and severe decline in professional journalism. Several factors, including the loss of readership and advertising to web-based publications, and particularly in the case of broadcast news organizations, the domination by giant corporations generally occupied in unrelated fields, has resulted in increasingly superficial, tabloid-like, market-oriented news. This development could possibly mean the complete loss of investigative journalism, a serious threat to our democracy. We are most fortunate to have author and veteran journalist James Goldsborough as the leader of this discussion. Jim spent 15 years of his distinguished career headquartered in Paris reporting, from forty countries no less, for The International Herald Tribune and Newsweek magazine. He has also worked for several other newspapers, first as a reporter and then as a columnist. He currently writes a column for The Voice of San Diego, the first experiment in regional investigative online reporting.

interview with Lawrence Solomon Dr. Solomon, one of the first professionals chosen for the WBSI staff back in 1959, is an industrial psychologist, author, educator and consultant, who built an international reputation as an expert in team building, conflict resolution, and the management of change. In addition to his long service to WBSI, where he headed several of the Institute's most innovative research programs, he has taught industrial and organizational psychology as a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology.

Commentary—Talking Back to Your Television Set 37 Years Later by Nicholas Johnson, who has for many years been on the faculty of the University of Iowa School of Law, but no doubt gained the most national attention when he served as a maverick FCC Commissioner in the Johnson administration. The range of his career activities is amazing--syndicated columnist, public lecturer, Congressional candidate, network TV host, school board member, co-director of a health policy institute, law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and the author of several books, the best known being the one he most interestingly updates in this commentaryk.

From the Editor
This conference takes a serious and in-depth look at a fundamental change in America that seems to be occurring, for the most part, unnoticed. Journalism, a critical component of democracy is undergoing a rapid decline. The conference leader, James Goldsborough, launches the conference by saying "We've been known as the "fourth estate" for as long as anyone can remember, more important to the nation, said Jefferson, than government itself"."

Preview Next Issue
Reversing the Decline of Community. Our current conference spotlights what's happening to our communities and what we might do about it. We are fortunate to have ILF Fellow Ralph Keyes leading the conference . An accomplished author, Ralph has published fourteen books and numerous articles. He has a long time interest in community, having written the groundbreaking "We, the Lonely People", and a number of his other books, including "The Post-Truth Era" deal with contemporary culture. Pick up any of them and you will find him to be prescient, fascinating, informed, and entertaining. If you are a writer, or wish you were, you should read his critically acclaimed "The Courage to Write", surely one of the best books ever written on the challenges of writing.

Special Announcement

The International Leadership Forum is pleased to announce its debut into the blogosphere with the launch of the ILF Post. In 1981, long before the advent of the Internet, WBSI used computer-based conferencing technology to create policy discussions among leaders from all parts of the world, launching the field of online distance education. This experience led to the founding of the International Leadership Forum, where for the past five years its eighty distinguished Fellows have deliberated together on a wide range of pressing policy issues. With this new outreach effort, we are pleased to present the personal thoughts of several of our ILF Fellows on a wide range of public concerns.

The ILF Post features regular commentaries by a core group of Fellows of the International Leadership Forum and will also include commentaries from selected guests. The blog format being employed is an experiment in including a spectrum of voices. This format enables readers to write their own comments in response to any article that has been posted. We hope you will find the articles stimulating and that you will be moved to add your own reactions to the ideas of the authors.

To date, the ILF Post includes articles from former US Ambassador to NATO Harlan Cleveland, author/filmmaker Michael Crichton, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, psychoanalyst Douglass Carmichael, Biospherian Jane Poynter, survey researcher Daniel Yankelovich, former president of Planned Parenthood Gloria Feldt, actress and former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts Jane Alexander, Yale economist and political scientist Charles Lindblom, author Ralph Keyes, former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson, and other ILF Fellows and guest experts, plus highlights and policy reports from the ILF conferences

These authors are regularly contributing articles on economics, education, politics, the environment and other contemporary issues. In keeping with the blog format, each article is short enough to read quickly but they are all packed tight with thought provoking insight and information.

Archives of Previous Issues
If you missed a past issue or simply want to review something of interest, please visit our archives where you will find links to all of our past Conference Digests, Interviews and Commentaries.