Pitt Honors College Hosts Panel on Future of Journalism, Democracy

The University of Pittsburgh Honors College and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will host a presentation titled “The Future of Journalism and Democracy” featuring a national panel of seasoned media professionals at 8 p.m. Feb. 24 in the auditorium of the Twentieth Century Club, 4201 Bigelow Blvd., Oakland.

Panelists are Chad Hermann, communications consultant, blogger for The Radical Middle, and editorial director of Carbolic Smoke Ball; Meg Martin, editor for The Roanoke Times’ roanoke.com; Jay Rosen, professor in the Department of Journalism at New York University (NYU); and Jon Wolman, editor and publisher of The Detroit News. Post-Gazette executive editor David Shribman will moderate.

Those interested in attending this free public event must RSVP by e-mail to uhcevent@pitt.edu (preferred) or call 412-624-6880,  providing name, phone number, and requested number of tickets, which will be available at the door.

Hermann, writer, editor, blogger, and consultant, spent 14 years teaching in higher education—the last 10 of those as a management communications faculty member in Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business—before becoming a consultant. In 2006, BusinessWeek magazine named him one of the country’s top 25 undergraduate business professors. Hermann has coedited eight books, including Gun Monkeys (Dell, 2003); and has contributed poems and essays to such publications as Newsday and The Huffington Post. His blog The Radical Middle appears on the Post-Gazette’s Web site, post-gazette.com.

Martin was a multimedia producer and served briefly as online communities editor before taking the lead at roanoke.com. She spent two years at The Poynter Institute, first as a summer fellow in the institute’s writing program, then as a yearlong Naughton Fellow, and as an associate editor of Poynter Online. Martin has taught at The Poynter Institute and will soon begin work with the News Literacy Project, a partner with The Poynter Institute. A Pittsburgh native, Martin graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2005 with a BA degree in English and a focus on oral storytelling and family narrative.

Rosen has served on NYU’s journalism faculty since 1986 and was chair of the department from 1999 to 2005. He is author of PressThink (www.pressthink.org), a blog he introduced in September 2003 about journalism and its ordeals, which won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog Award for outstanding defense of free expression. He also blogs at The Huffington Post and is a member of the Wikipedia Advisory Board. He is author of What Are Journalists For? (Yale University Press, 1999). He was director of the Project on Public Life and the Press from 1993 to 1997. As a press critic and reviewer, Rosen has published in The Nation and the Columbia Journalism Review as well as other publications. He received a PhD degree in media studies from NYU.

As The Detroit News’ editor and publisher, Wolman oversees the paper’s administrative and news operations and publishes The Detroit News’ Web site, detnews.com, launched in 1996. Wolman began his current position after three years as editorial page editor of The Denver Post. Prior to joining the Post, Wolman worked at the Associated Press for 31 years. Wolman served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, chairing the national reporting jury in 1999. A native of Madison, Wis., Wolman is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin.

Shribman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism in 1995 for his coverage of Washington and the American political scene. Before coming to Pittsburgh, he was the Washington, D.C., bureau chief of the Boston Globe. He also worked in various positions for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Star, and The Buffalo News. His column, “National Perspective,” is syndicated to more than 50 papers nationally, and he is a contributing editor for Fortune magazine.