The new ASU California Center hosted the first Media Summit of the Americas on Tuesday, a global journalism conference that drew a top government official and a major whistleblower, as well as Latin American journalists who work under threat from their own governments.
The new California Center is a perfect place for a journalism conference because it’s in the Herald Examiner Building, which used to house one of the top newspapers in the country, said Battinto Batts Jr., the dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The Cronkite School hosted the conference in partnership with the Equis Institute, a hub for leaders in the Latino community working to increase civic participation in American democracy.
“Where we are gathering is a former press room for the Herald Examiner,” Batts said, asking the crowd to visualize the presses running during the newspaper’s heyday. The building sat vacant after the Herald Examiner went out of business in 1989, and ASU spent four years renovating the structure in downtown Los Angeles.
The ASU California Center houses a bureau of Cronkite News, run by student journalists, Batts said.
“We are leaders in the fight against mis- and disinformation,” he said. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be the platform to discuss this global threat.
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