Science, Politics, and the future of media: Xeni and Miles O'Brien talk at Harvard Shorenstein Center

During the recent 25th anniversary celebration for the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, I had a public conversation with Miles O'Brien, longtime science and technology journalist.

Here's an MP3 link to the audio.

We spoke about transitions from "big media" to independent internet media; the importance of government funding for youth science education and for science news in broadcasting; and Miles shared some wonderful stories from his 30-year history as a television news reporter (17 of which were as an anchor and reporter on CNN, now he's with PBS NewsHour). There were some great stories about Space Shuttle launches (he covered 45 of them), News Anchors Behaving Badly, and how Miles almost became a Space Shuttle astronaut during his CNN years.

I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed it that day. Here's an assortment of tweets during the talk (video and transcription soon).

Lots of other great talks from the event here:

Ken Auletta and Vivek Kundra
Steve Grove and Anne Marie Slaughter
Salant Lecture with Clay Shirky
Rebecca MacKinnon and Abderrahim Foukara
David Carr and Danah Boyd
Dan Okrent and Adam Moss
Emily Bell and Joichi Ito
Mark McKinnon and Jim VandeHei

(Special thanks to Clay Shirky, Alex S. Jones, and Marvin Kalb, whose talks at the event inspired me, and to organizer Edith M. Holway.)