Tsinghua University

Beijing, China

October 13, 2008

Remarks by Alberto Ibargüen

President, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

To the Global Business Journalism Program

Thank you, Dean Li.

Nie men hau.

It is a great pleasure for me to be in Beijing and a great honor to speak at Tsinghua University, one of the world’s great centers of learning.

No one who reads history can fail to be awed by a first visit to China.

For someone from the new world like myself, it is stunning to be where centuries of culture had already passed before my part of the globe joined world civilization. My visits to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and to the Great Wall at Simatai moved me deeply. As long as I live, I will never forget this weekend.

Thank you, Dean Li for making it possible. And thank you, my new friends, Liu Libín and Nailine Chow Wiest, and students Anna Zhou, Milcah Lu, Victoria Gu, Jackie Bi, and Viktor Young Xu for so generously sharing with me your time and insights during these past few days.

But the appeal of China in the world today is less about the past than it is about the present. We, rest of the world, are drawn here by the magnetic force of your industry and innovation, your daring and your capacity to move into a future you have designed. Yesterday, Anna kept wondering why I took so many pictures of highways and amazing buildings. I cannot tell you how strong an impact it made on me to see mile after mile of modern infrastructure, roads and skyscrapers, clean and functioning, powerful statements about your future. I marvel at the efficiency and at the confidence with which you’ve decided the equation of human cost and tradition against the infrastructure necessary to be a power in the modern world.

And we are drawn here, too, by the belief that, in a globalized world, we will be increasingly and intensely inter-connected. I am here today precisely because I believe – and my colleagues at Knight Foundation believe – that a global world can be a better world, though it will be a world with new challenges and opportunities for understanding one another.

I am here because Tsinghua’s new program in global journalism is of great interest to us, perhaps even as a model to be copied elsewhere. And this visit is part of a discussion to determine the nature of a continuing relationship between Knight Foundation, the International Center for Journalists and Tsinghua University. One of the great privileges of an organization like Knight Foundation is the opportunity to support ideas that work and ideas that matter.

The Global Journalism Program at Tsinghua is a program that works and a program that matters.

And, finally, I am here because at Knight Foundation we deeply honor our founders who were pioneers in the American newspaper business. Rouhly around the time Tsinghua was founded, Jack Knight returned from World War I to the small city of Akron in the state of Ohio and by the 1970’s, had built the biggest newspaper company in the United Sates. With his younger brother, Jim, they did that in by doing two very important things:

1. They provided reliable, quality journalism to their readers. People who read Knight newspapers trusted Knight newspapers.

2. They were opportunistic adopters of new technology – new printing technology, new transportation and distribution technology and something then brand new called the telephone!

Jack and Jim Knight had the entrepreneurial spirit of inquiry and courage that flourishes anywhere, whether in the cities where they published newspapers in the last century or today in Bangalore in India, Silicon Valley in California, Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Zhong Guang Lun here in Beijing.

And so I come to celebrate your enterprise and to honor our senior founder, John Knight, who was also an internationalist. He was never anything other than thoroughly American, but he saw beyond the borders of our country and our culture with respect for others and their cultures, and understood the interrelated nature of the world’s direction.

INTERESTING TIMES

We are cursed, I think you know, to live in interesting times. But we are in fact privileged to live in a time that you could liken to the early printing of books during the Ming Dynasty, or Guttenberg and his printing press, or to Alexander Graham Bell and his telephone.

We are privileged to live at the beginning of Internet and of the World Wide Web, and so we understand and will experience communications and global connection unlike any other time in history.

I believe that.

And I believe that our most important task – those of us who have chosen journalism – our most important task is to figure out how to use new and ever more efficient digital platforms for the effective engagement in the fair, accurate, contextual search for truth. I hope that’s why you’re here at the global journalism program at Tsinghua University. I know that that’s why I’m here in support of this program.

And at a time when global trade has reached some $13 trillion, when markets in one country impact economies in many others, when readers have a greater understanding of the impact of business on their lives and when citizens believe they should have increasingly greater say in how business is conducted, business journalism may have its finest hour.

It will be your job to help readers make sense of news. The average reader isn’t equipped to understand why the failure of mortgage-backed securities as an investment instrument has sent world markets reeling. The average reader wouldn’t understand – unless you explain it simply and clearly – why some governments argue for free markets while maintaining high tariffs or spout the gospel of de-regulation while partially nationalizing banks. Or allow businesses or bureaucrats to fail in their duty to provide safe products for consumers.

Yet, it is essential that they understand because, digital technology enables citizen participation in a way the world has never known. In a digital, interactive world, readers will want to act, and they will be empowered to act. Your job is to make sure they act on the basis of good information.

THE PARTNERS

Knight Foundation is delighted by the opportunity to work with Tsinghua’s School of Journalism and Communication and with your Executive Dean, Li Xiguang.

Dean Li, this program would not exist without your vision, courage and tenacity. You have been recognized by the United Nations for your work against AIDS and you have been honored by your country as one of the Olympic torch bearers. I am not surprised by those honors.

You have brought together for a great purpose some of the most talented young journalists and journalism teachers in the world. We owe you a debt of gratitude for your leadership and for your amazing ability to get things done.

Thanks and recognition is also due to our partners – Merrill Lynch, Bloomberg News Service, and Deloitte – who believe strongly in what you are doing. University teaching is not part of their core mission, but they understand that an informed business reader is a better consumer, partner, customer, investor and a better citizen, so they have been willing supporters.

And I want to say a special thanks to Joyce Barnathan and the International Center for Journalists.

ICFJ is a non-profit organization dedicated to excellence in journalism around the world. For almost a quarter of a century, they have worked with more than 40,000 journalists from 176 countries, providing hands-on training and workshops, fellowships and international exchanges for reporters and media managers. For some 15 of those years, the ICFJ has run the Knight International Journalism Fellowships program that sends top media professionals around the world to develop projects that will improve the way journalism is practiced.

These Fellows have helped create health journalism associations in Africa. In Guatemala, in Central America, they helped launch an Internet platform so that community radio stations could share programming, and in East Timor they helped start that country’s first university journalism program. Just two weeks ago, I visited a Knight Fellow in New Delhi working with a young news agency and an environmental NGO. And there are many, many other examples, including here, where in 2006, ICFJ placed a Knight Fellow Nailene Chou Wiest at Tsinghua University to focus on quality business.

Since then, Tsinghua and ICFJ designed a program that would hold itself to the highest journalistic standards and would distinguish itself in five specific ways:

· First, the program is hands-on and practical.

· Second, its facilities are state of the art.

· Third, along with a first-rate Tsinghua faculty, it has an international faculty who are top business reporters and editors. It is an integral part of the program’s vision that students and teachers come from many countries, not only from China, giving the class a global perspective and insight.

· Fourth, it encourages those students to engage in critical thinking about world economics.

· Finally, it is the first program anywhere to emphasize global business journalism.

That last component, the global business focus, is truly unique and suggests a very important distinction: global is different than local and global is different from multi-national. We are only just beginning to understand the full implications of those differences.

As an example, I will tell you that I happen to be on the board of directors of PepsiCo, one of the biggest food and beverage companies in the world. In a meeting two weeks ago in India, PepsiCo chairman, Indra Nooyi, posed the challenge to her leadership team: How does PepsiCo become a great and global company instead of merely a leading multi-national company?

Implied in her challenge is a different and greater understanding of cultures and traditions. It supposes that a greater understanding and respect of those cultural differences can lead truly global companies to inspire their employees and associates to greater business success and personal satisfaction.

It will take reporters and editors who understand these differences to accurately report on global business. You will be such reporters.

INFORMATION PARADOX

Let me talk for a moment about why we believe that programs like this one are so critical to our common future—and then, I’ll be happy to take your questions.

The digital revolution in news re presents opportunity in every nation — whether you are China, India, Brazil, or the United States. Those opportunities can enhance how a society is organized, or how an economy or information systems are organized, or how your values inform your decisions.

But at the same time — no matter your government, your ideology, your economy, or your creed — this digital revolution also presents challenges to all of us who work, live, communicate, and do business in the global economy.

I think many of us who work in media have a core assumption that equates more information with better understanding. In fact, our information needs are not always better served simply because there is more information and more ways of getting it. In fact, I would argue that in the United States, we have more information available than ever but are less informed about the local civic life of our communities. We have more information than we can effectively use. This is a paradox. We might call this the “information paradox.”

In just one year, our world created roughly 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written. It’s the equivalent of 12 stacks of books, extending 92 million miles from the earth to the sun— created in just one year.

Yet, for businesses and families and government, it is still hard to find the information we need, when we need it, and how we need it—let alone have the context to understand it.

You know in your own lives how much information is available and how randomly it comes at you. Studies in the United States show that the average knowledge worker in a business today spends 20 percent of their day looking for information—and 50 percent of the time, they can’t find what they are looking for.

I believe that the world has an increasing need for journalists who can help find the relevant story in reams of data and communicate in ways that are readable, intelligible and usable for the average citizen.

There is no place where that understanding is needed more than in our global economic community.

Ten years ago, the financial crisis that began in Asia and reverberated across the globe was a stark reminder of how interrelated our world was. A decade later, the current crisis on Wall Street has sent the even stronger shock waves in the opposite direction.

For our two countries in particular, our futures are intertwined. Bilateral trade between the United States and China in 1979 stood at $2.5 billion. At the beginning of this year, it stood at $321 billion. Last year China surpassed Canada as the number one provider of imported goods in the United States. China is America’s third largest trading partner and holds enormous investments in US Treasury and debt.

Understanding the Wall Street crisis is essential to both sides of the Pacific. It cannot be understood from the perspective of just one side or the other; in this interconnected world, we all need full, accurate, contextual information, and that requires the kind of approach you take here at Tsinghua’s global journalism program.

The tainted milk crisis here in China is another example of a story that demands full and complete coverage not just for the Chinese people, but for the world. That story is not about criticizing a structure or a government. It is not even primarily about finding out who committed errors or made bad judgments. It is about saving the lives of children and ensuring that productions systems are safe. And that the people have trust.

The biggest single element lacking in the world financial crisis today is trust. We cannot trust that 800 billion dollars is enough to turn events because we do not know the quality of the assets we’ve got in hand. And if you can’t trust what you’ve got in hand, how can you trust the leaders? The fall of brands we trusted, starting with Enron and Arthur Andersen and now of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and the major stumbles of Wachovia and AIG all undermine our trust.

AUTHENTICITY

What can restore it? Authenticity. Transparency. Basic understanding of complex issues.

Who can help restore that trust? You can. You can by the fair and accurate, contextual search for truth. That’s what journalists do and, when they succeed, it is a boon to all mankind.

Let’s not pretend it’s easy. In business, one economy will have strict rules around disclosure and a competing economy won’t. Yet, they compete with each other and trading with each other, and rules that burden companies in one nation will be an advantage for companies in others. As the world becomes more global, we need to understand how to communicate in a way that understands the context; that strives for a common set of values and methods of operation that we can share.

I mentioned the information paradox that massive amounts of information do not necessarily make a better informed public. Another facet of that information paradox is that, premised as we are on world-wide, digital technology, accuracy and the journalistic imperative for attention to detail is greater than ever – because the consequences of false or inaccurate information can be more devastating than ever before.

If you doubt that, consider the case of United Airlines some months ago. Information went out over Internet, reporting incorrectly that the airline was about to file for bankruptcy. The error started at a Tribune company newspaper, was picked up by Google automated systems and then by Bloomberg systems relying on Google. In less than 12 minutes, United Airlines lost more than $1 billion in stock-market value.

Take another example, this one generated by citizen journalists. At the beginning of this month, CNN’s citizen journalism channel iReport published a report that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was near death. It turned out that the report was false. Health concerns about Mr. Jobs caused the price to plummet.

What was the cause of the misinformation? Was someone trying to manipulate the price or was it simple error? Whatever the motivation, the reality is that virtually anyone can be a publisher.

We live in a world where the potential negative consequences of the lack of authenticity, whether by institutions or by individuals are staggering. And the potential negative consequences of people not trusting the information they get are even greater.

Not long ago, newspapers or broadcast journalists were the first and last word on a story. But today, in any nation, journalists are competing with citizens empowered by technology.

I believe this empowerment is good. In many ways, it brings us closer to the ultimate ideal of a world where citizens have equal and effective say in their own affairs. That may sound idealistic, but consider the impact citizen journalists are already having. Consider the metro bombings in London a few years ago when the first and most dramatic photographs were by people using cell phones. And here in China, after the horrible Sichuan earthquake earlier this year, thousands of students and other citizens used cell phones and text messages to get the story out and send video and photos around the world.

How do we empower citizens to contribute to the global good while also ensuring that the quality of that reporting is accurate? With every nation on earth challenged by digital media today, how do we harmonize our efforts to find solutions? How do we share knowledge and learn from one another? How do we ask the most important questions?

KNIGHT FOUNDATION

These are questions we ask at Knight Foundation.

Knight Foundation seeks to identify and support the ideas and innovators who are doing the work that will transform the communities the Knight brothers served with their newspapers. www.knightfoundation.org.

Given that we’re a foundation created by newspapermen and run by a former newspaper publisher, it’s no surprise that we are passionately committed to promoting journalism excellence and innovative tools for sharing that excellence. Since 1950, we’ve invested nearly $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression.

Our work is focused on leading journalism excellence into the digital age and on meeting the information needs of communities. In the last two years, we have committed $100 million to media innovation projects that we hope will answer the questions I’ve raised this morning and perhaps help us find our way from an information paradox to a world of information order and trust.

It is clear that we are just at the early stages of how digital technology will ultimately change the way we communicate with each other.

None of us know where this information revolution will take us. But at Knight Foundation, we believe there is much we can do to spur media innovation—to support intelligent experimentation around the world of all the ways that technology can improve our global dialogue.

While we are focused globally, we are working locally—particularly in the United States—to explore better ways to improve communication flows within local communities.

Our job as we see it is not to prescribe solutions, or impose one value system. We are not here to provide answers—we are really here to ask questions, to support media innovation and experimentation in all its forms, and to empower those making change within countries across the global economy.

We’re pursuing this charge through media innovation initiatives and I’d like to mention a few.

First, we are now two years into an international competition, called the Knight News Challenge, to find innovative uses of digital information technology. These grants are intended to fund those ideas that deliver news and information to geographically defined communities on digital platforms.

We rooted the challenge around three concepts: digital, news and information, and geographic community, in other words, the places where we actually live! I encourage all of you to consider applying and if you’re interested, go towww.newschallenge.org.

Last year, we had more than 3,000 entries. We have funded ideas for innovative digital projects, including:

Experiments with digital media at MIT

Mapping of events and information by local communities

Offering the public a chance to financially support stories journalists want to do

Online newspapers

Use of video and cellphone to tell news and information in various countries.

None of these are The Answer. Each of these is an experiment, seeking to find answers for the most effective ways to inform communities about their own true interests.

This year we are supporting an idea from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web in Geneva, back in 1990. Today, Berners-Lee is a professor at MIT, focused on maintaining the Web free and universal. He believes that a major threat to a free and universal World Wide Web is the lack of authenticity – that is, the amount of false information presented on the Web and therefore he’s developing an ambitious technology that will help authenticate information on the Web, programming that will help determine whether information you read on the Web is false or accurate.

Essentially, he will put the power of the web to use as a fact checker – the role played by the copy desk of a newspaper.

Just last month, at a Knight Foundation dinner, Berners-Lee announced the creation of a new World Wide Web Foundation that aims to advance One Web that is free and open, to expand its capability and robustness, improve its accuracy, and extend its benefits to all people on the planet. We are proud to be the very first to support the new foundation with a grant of $5 million, which we also announced that evening.

We have made grants to younger visionaries and have specifically earmarked half a million dollars for ideas coming from people under the age of 25. We would welcome any and all of you—faculty and students alike—to submit ideas and have your voice heard. Again, I encourage you to apply atwww.newschallenge.org.

CONCLUSION

For more than half a century, Knight Foundation’s efforts have been focused on the United States. Our international attention was almost exclusively focused on Latin America and, to a lesser extent, in Europe. It was only recently that we made a conscious decision to focus more globally and you are very much a part of our thinking and even inspiration. Frankly, there is no nation more central to the future of global understanding as China.

Our senior founder, Jack Knight, talked about the role of a newspaper as informing and illuminating the minds of the citizens who read his newspapers so that the people, well informed, could decide their own true interests. That was a great way to run a newspaper then and it is what we seek to support at Knight Foundation now.

Of course, our thinking is driven by the World Wide Web. Communications are now global, though we live locally; information volume is massive, yet it is processed individually. The information paradox must be resolved. We are resolved to try.

Only a few generations in history can say they were present at the creation of a new era in human communication and understanding. You are present at the creation and soon, you will be its leaders. You can restore trust through authenticity in your reporting and creativity and boldness in your use of multi-media.

It is my earnest hope that what you learn here at Tsinghua makes a difference in your lives and in your careers because all of us have a stake in your success.

Thank you.