THE NEWS REVOLUTION: A PUBLIC CONVERSATION

Cape Ann Forum to announce GHS award at spring event

Nationally syndicated radio commentator Christopher Lydon and Columbia University student Kunal Jasty, an intern at Lydon’s Radio Open Source project, will explore the growing gulf in how the older and younger generations keep up with our rapidly changing world at the Cape Ann Forum’s last event of the season—“The News Revolution”—on Sunday, May 4 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Gloucester City Hall. The program is free and open to the public.

“We think there’s a good public conversation to be had between the newspaper and the digital generations about what we need to know and where to find it,” says Lydon, who has been called “the last newspaper guy and the first podcaster” for his innovative use of new media.

The Sunday evening event will also feature the announcement of the ninth annual Cape Ann Forum international awareness award for a Gloucester High School senior who has done outsstanding work in educating her peers on global issues, with the recipient chosen in consultation with GHS faculty. The prize carries with it a $500 scholarship. Lydon says he chose his topic for the event “in honor of the graduating seniors and the ‘rising generation.’”

Lydon covered politics as a reporter for the Boston Globe and the New York Times in the 1970s. He hosted the Ten O’Clock news on WGBH-TV through the 1980s and cofounded and hosted the widely syndicated news and talk show The Connection on WBUR in the 1990s, which at its peak reached 400,000 listeners before a falling out with WBUR ended the run.

Over the next decade, his Radio Open Source blog became a launch-pad for international broadcasts and other activities. While a fellow at Harvard Law School‘s Berkman Center for Internet & Society in 2003, Lydon began recording interviews on blogging and politics and posting them on his blog as MP3 files, an event credited with sparking the growth of podcasting.

In 2005, Lydon returned to the airwaves on Boston’s WGBH with “Open Source”, a blog and podcast on international issues syndicated through Public Radio International. Last January, “Open Source with Christopher Lydon,” was picked up by his former employer, WBUR-FM, and now runs for an hour on Thursday evenings at 9 p.m.

Kunal Jasty, on leave from Columbia University, where he’s a math major, is spending a year at Radio Open Source as a producer. He attended Milton Academy, then the University of Chicago and Columbia before taking a gap year to work with Lydon.

This will be the fifth Cape Ann Forum of the 2013/2014 season and the 68^th since the all-volunteer organization was founded after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For more information, go to the Forum’s website at www.capeannforum.org.