On November 3 and 4 in New York City, high-ranking government officials, leaders of NGOs, journalists, First Amendment scholars, business leaders, and Columbia students and alumni will participate in the inaugural event of a Columbia University forum series titled, A Free Press for a Global Society.  As transformative changes in technology and the marketplace force traditional media to rethink long held assumptions, there is no shortage of challenges to preserving the benefits of a free press in our global society.  Divergent notions of sovereignty and disparate views about the value of an open society must be reconciled with the free flow of information.  A consensus needs to emerge in the United States and among nations regarding global legal norms for governing the press and the international legal institutions responsible for enforcing them.   The capacity for producing high quality reporting for our interconnected world will have to be enhanced and, in some instances, created anew.