The publisher of one-year-old news site Quartz, Jay Lauf, will deliver the keynote speech at digital journalism conference news:rewired.
The one-day event, which takes place two weeks today on Friday 20 September, will open with a presentation by Lauf, who arrived at the Atlantic Media Company as vice president (now senior vice president) in 2008. The company’s portfolio includes both The Atlantic – in print and online – and digital-only Quartz.
When first launched, Quartz was said to have been “built primarily for the devices closest at hand: tablets and mobile phones” for an audience of “business people in the new global economy”. As such the design keeps the stream of headlines – which can be filtered by ‘top news’, sections or topical areas called ‘obsessions’ – to the left of the page, with each article able to fill the remaining space.
Recently, the site also announced the launch of ‘annotations’, to allow users to leave comments beside relevant pieces of text in an article, as opposed to the more standard style online of posting comments at the end of an article.
In his keynote speech at news:rewired, Lauf will discuss the platform’s innovative features further, including the impact on the experience for reporters and readers alike. He will also discuss how to think about journalism for the social web.
Tickets to the conference have now sold out, with more than 200 attendees due to partake in the event, which features a full-day of presentations, panel discussions and workshops.
