The Editors by Stephen Harrison: Wikipedia, internet communities, and the battle for truth in the digital age

Crowd-sourced internet encyclopedias—most famously, Wikipedia—have the power to shape the story we tell about the past and the information with which we move into the future. The people who edit those forums—namely, an army of unpaid volunteers—take their roles seriously. But what happens when that power is manipulated?

That’s the set-up for Stephen Harrison’s new novel, The Editors. When a freelance journalist attends the global conference for Infopendium, a fictional rendition of Wikipedia, she expects a straightforward story: editors—PhDs and high schoolers alike—debating the rules of the crowdsourced encyclopedia. But when a hacker targets the conference, leaving a cryptic message, it sets off an online information war with grave offline consequences.

Join Future Tense and Harrison, a leading journalist covering Wikipedia and online information ecosystems and the longtime author of the Source Notes column, to discuss The Editors, internet communities, and the battle for truth in the digital age.

The first 20 registrants will receive a free copy of the book upon arriving at the event. You can also purchase it online.

Speaker:
Stephen Harrison
Author, The Editors

Moderator:
Andrés Martinez
Editorial Director, Future Tense
Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Praise for The Editors

“A strikingly relevant and compelling suspense novel. With the pace of a thriller and the heart of a drama, Harrison exposes the unseen battles fought in the digital trenches of today's information war." —Taylor Lorenz, Technology Columnist, The Washington Post

“The Editors is an enthralling, ambitious and sharply observed contemporary thriller - no citation needed. Already one of the best reporters of the digital age, Stephen Harrison shows he’s just as adept at fiction. Every page draws the threads of a (world wide) web of intrigue, made taught by relevance, energy, and the author’s formidable understanding.” —Richard Cooke, Contributing Editor, The Monthly

“A timely and entertaining thriller that confronts the perils of misinformation on the eve of a pandemic. Harrison’s writing chops are on full display, and effectively capture a moment in our recent collective history.” —The BookLife Prize

“The great Wikipedia novel. There’s a new adventure on almost every page, and it’s hard to stop reading as you fall down the rabbit hole.” —Pete Ekman, The Signpost