As Managing Director of Australia’s national broadcaster, Mark Scott has presided over a significant transformation of the ABC, extending its leadership in news and introducing independent auditing. Its international engagement has expanded through new partnerships with agencies like AusAid, and growing audiences for Radio Australia and Australia Network. The ABC has inaugurated Australia's first internet television service, iView and won its highest audience share on record in radio and television.

Before joining the ABC, Mark Scott spent almost 12 years in senior editorial and executive positions with Fairfax Media, including as Editorial Director of the Fairfax newspaper and magazine division, and Editor-in-Chief of metropolitan, regional and community newspapers.

In his A N Smith Lecture Mark Scott will examine where media might be headed after the fall of the great media empires. Like its economy, Australia’s media market was built on a balance of public and private enterprise. In commercial television, the age of media moguls is passing. Private equity now dominates. In newspapers, the Murdoch media empire has responded to the crisis of advertising by proposing to transform the online world in the same way that cable transformed television – by making consumers pay.

What happens to quality journalism when its reach and audience are limited in this way? What will Australians expect of the ABC in the next decade?

The A N Smith Lecture in Journalism commemorates Arthur Norman Smith, a leading political journalist. Over its 70-year-history this prestigious lecture has attracted a series of distinguished speakers. Previous speakers include Rupert Murdoch, Bob Hawke, Michelle Grattan, Peter Beattie, Jon Faine, Maxine McKew and Michael Gawenda.