DSU event to consider publishing in the digital era
April 18, 2019
The effect computers have had on words will be discussed by a panel of national and local writers, editors, and publishers on April 24 at Dakota State University.
“Computing Words: The Way We Publish Now” is part of an ongoing series of the DSU Classics Institute that investigates “The Cultural Consequences of Computers.” The South Dakota Humanities Council is a co-sponsor for this discussion, to be held at noon on April 24 in the Karl Mundt Library, Room 200. The public is invited to attend.
Dr. Joseph Bottum, director of the Classics Institute, points out that “Forty years ago, America had a newspaper and magazine industry unrivaled in history: hundreds of daily papers, thousands of monthly journals -- pouring out hundreds of thousands of print pages. And now, we have . . . the Internet.”
This has brought about declines in print circulation, print and advertising revenue, and has created a different world for publishing, “maybe disastrously different, maybe wondrously different, but profoundly changed from what the industry of words had been before,” Bottum said.
The panel discussing computing words will include:
- Richard Starr, an editor at the Weekly Standard from 1995 to 2018, who previously worked as an editor at the Washington Times, the National Interest, the Public Interest, Insight, and the American Spectator.
- Lauren Weiner, former congressional staffer and Pentagon speech writer, who worked at the Washington Times and has served since 2014 as associate editor of Law & Liberty, an online publication.
- Micah Mattix, chair of English and Communication at Regent University, who is literary editor of the American Conservative and edits a daily email newsletter on books and arts called Prufrock.
- Jon M. Hunter, publisher of the Madison Daily Leader, the print newspaper in Madison, South Dakota.