Deni Elliott spoke yesterday before an audience of aspiring journalists about an important topic in their future field -- journalism ethics.

Elliott, the Poynter Jamison chairman in media ethics at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, enjoyed an enthusiastic crowd in the HUB Auditorium last night while delivering her speech, "Sources and Sorcery: Creating Journalism in the 21st Century."

The talk served as this year's Dr. N.N. Oweida Lecture in Journalism Ethics, an annual event supported by an endowment from Margaret L. Oweida, wife of libeled Dr. N.N. Oweida, and cosponsored by the Don Davis Program in Communications Ethics within the Penn State College of Communications.

The audience consisted mostly of journalism and communications students seeking extra credit or completing assignments for class.

"I'm here for my class," said Kelley Edwards (sophomore-communications), who was writing an article based on Elliott's speech for her news-writing class.

"Journalism," Elliott said, "is the act of bringing together bits of information from various sources" and using "journalistic judgement" to create a story.

Elliott's speech explored the transition from what she refers to as "the old paradigm of journalism" to the modern methods of news reporting.

"Now we have the Internet as a player" in the modern media machine, she said. "Anyone can be a publisher."

With this in mind, Elliott asked if the public will turn to "Wikinews" -- a news Web site where anyone can write or edit articles -- or The New York Times Web site for news in the future.

"We need a synthesis between the old and new paradigms" for better journalism, she said.