NEWS RELEASE

11/8/02

CONTACT: James Bettinger, Knight Fellowships program: (650) 725-1189
Shanto Iyengar, chair, Department of Communication: (650) 723-5509

Press symposium to feature Overholser, Patterson, Rosenstiel

Three noted journalism observers -- Geneva Overholser, Thomas Patterson and Tom Rosenstiel -- will come to Stanford Nov. 18 to discuss the future of news.

The three will be featured speakers at the Carlos McClatchy Memorial Symposium, "Everything Fit to Print? The Future of News in the 21st Century."

James Bettinger, professor (teaching) of communication and director of the Knight journalism fellowships program, will be the symposium moderator.

The symposium will begin at 3:45 p.m. in Braun Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.

Overholser holds the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the University of Missouri School of Journalism in its Washington Journalism Center. A frequent commentator on media, she has a regular press column in the Columbia Journalism Review. She wrote a syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group from 1998 to 2001. Before that, she was ombudsman for the Washington Post and, from 1988 to 1995, editor of the Des Moines Register. Previously, she served as a member of the editorial board of the New York Times, deputy editorial page editor and editorial writer for the Des Moines Register and reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

Patterson is Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press in the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He previously taught for many years at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. His most recent book, The Vanishing Voter, published this year, is based on a study of the decline of citizen participation in U.S. elections. Earlier books include Out of Order, which received the American Political Science Association's Graber Award for the best book in political communication, and The Unseeing Eye, which was selected by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the 50 most influential books of the past half-century in the field of public opinion.

Rosenstiel is director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington, D.C., and vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a consortium of more than 1,000 journalists engaged in reflection about the values of the profession. He previously was media critic for MSNBC, chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek and media critic for the Los Angeles Times. He is the co-author, with Bill Kovach, of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect, and Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media. His earlier books include Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American Politics, 1992.

The McClatchy Symposium, named for the founder and late editor of the Fresno Bee, is sponsored by the Stanford Department of Communication. The Carlos McClatchy Memorial Lectures were established in 1964.

The Department of Communication offers undergraduate degrees and graduate degrees in journalism, documentary film, media studies and communication research. Shanto Iyengar, the Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, is chair of the department.

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