Emily Bell on journalism's digital future

Citizen journalism, the journalist as trusted commentator, and the need for journalists to engage in dialogue with their audiences by embracing emerging technologies were just some of the themes covered by Guardian News & Media's Director of Digital Content, Emily Bell, in her thought-provoking lecture on the future of journalism that was delivered to a packed audience at University College Falmouth this week.

Entitled Back to the News Future: Journalism 10 years from now, Emily's was the first in a series of high profile Professorial Lectures at University College Falmouth that combines distinguished names from the creative industries and in-house academic experts.

As one of the stars of a more web-focused generation of senior media figures, Emily is the guiding light behind http://www.guardian.co.uk/ which has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Webby for Best Newspaper on the web in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2009, and is one of the first industry experts to have been appointed as a Visiting Professor to UCF.

Cantering through cathartic changes that have revolutionised print media - from the impact of the Gutenberg printing press on Renaissance Europe, which was comparable to that of the internet on modern-day society, to the Peterloo Massacre of 1815, an uprising of thousands agitating for parliamentary reform, which led to the foundation of the Manchester Guardian in 1821 to espouse civil liberty and political radicalism - Emily reflected on more recent journalistic revolutions that she had encountered throughout her career. She concluded that although trust and transparency would always be paramount, and that the ‘beautifully-written article' would always be valued, the rise of social media platforms like Twitter; the new symbiotic relationship between a newspaper and its readers evidenced by the growing number of citizen journalists providing valuable visual content through mobile phone technology; and the appetite of 21^st century readers for consuming news in myriad formats provided exciting opportunities for the journalists of the future.

The next in UCF's Professorial Lecture series will be Process - crafts meet technology by Edward Barber, who is the founding partner of design studio, Barber Osgerby, on Thursday 21 May.

Edward and his partner, Jay Osgerby, were recently named Royal Designers for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts. Since forming their company in 1996, Barber and Osgerby have collaborated on designing products and furniture as BarberOsgerby and architectural projects for clients such as Stella McCartney as Universal Design Studio.

Edward will discuss the design process across a broad range of projects covering mass production and traditional craft-based production that utilises advances in digital technology.

The lecture is free and open to the public, and will take place at 6.30pm in the Chapel Lecture Theatre at the Tremough Campus in Penryn. As space is limited, however, all tickets must be reserved in advance by contacting the Poly in Church Street on 01326 212300.

For further information about University College Falmouth's Professorial Lecture Series, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/visitingprofessors

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012, that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall County Council.

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