Turning another page in the news

The future of journalism is in Las Vegas -- or at least that’s what Rob Curley, multimedia extraordinaire and tech consultant for The Las Vegas Sun, imbued into a large group of entrepreneurs and media folks at Stanford business school Tuesday night.

“What if a newspaper could start over?” he began his presentation by asking.

Ten minutes later, it appeared the audience believed the Sun had.

The presentation was nothing less than Vegas pizzazz. The Sun’s new partner site, Las Vegas Weekly, is promoting the news in an engaging, er, pleasing way.

Strippers telling the day’s weather; Michael Winslow talking to tourists on the street; even videos of the UNLV basketball team recreating plays from previous games, just for the site.

The first comment following the presentation came from the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki, who was “sold” on Curley's "pitch" and was eager to invest.

The conversation quickly changed to the woes of the industry across the board, with future revenue streams taking main issue.

“As a Libertarian, myself, I’m more interested in kindle, than watching newspapers” become funded through taxes, admitted Heather A. Harde, the event's moderator and CEO of TechCrunch.

The lone journalist on the panel, Larry Magid, a columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, felt that journalists are being asked to do too much, citing examples of journalists facing pressure to report, capture audio and video, and then edit the footage, also.

He believes that government funding of news organizations, at least partially, is not inherently bad.

Ann Grimes, acting Director of Stanford’s School of Journalism, said that “people are pushing every lever available to them,” and encouraged entrepreneurs in the crowd to look at the problems facing the industry and innovate accordingly.

The event was hosted by the Stanford Venture Lab, a joint program between the University and MIT. The program hosts monthly events promoting innovation and collaboration on high tech ventures.