Spring 2009
February 24, 2009 — Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Elizabeth
Ware Packard professor of communications and director of the Annenberg
Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Just a month
after Inauguration Day, she examined “Emerging Media and the Path
to the Oval Office.”
Each presidential election year, the
center conducts the National Annenberg Election Survey, the largest and
most comprehensive regular temperature taking of the American
electorate. It also is the sponsor of FactCheck, the often cited
nonprofit devoted to examining the factual accuracy of U.S. political
advertisements and claims.
“What voters know about the
candidates and their positions matters because the relationship among
campaigning, voting and governance makes it possible for the citizenry
to hold those it elects responsible,” says Jamieson, a frequent
commentator on the American campaign and election process for National
Public Radio, CBS, PBS’
The NewsHour, CNN, and
The New York Times. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she also is the author, co-author or editor of 15 books, including
Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (Oxford, 2008) and
unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (Random House, 2007).
March 25–26, 2009 — Brian Storm, former director of
multimedia at MSNBC.com and now president of MediaStorm, a multimedia
production studio based in New York City. He led a
workshop on "Multimedia Storytelling in the Age of Emerging Media."
Fall 2009
September 9, 2009—Jason Whitlock, a 1990 Ball State graduate who has become a respected sportswriter for The Kansas City Star and
analyst for FoxSports. His 2007 column in the aftermath of the Don
Imus/Rutgers women's basketball team controversy further thrust the
former Cardinals football player into the ongoing national debate about
race relations. As a result of his “ability to seamlessly integrate
sports commentary with social commentary and to challenge widely held
assumptions along the racial divide,” the Scripps Howard Foundation
awarded Whitlock its National Journalism Award for commentary in March
2008, making him the first sportswriter to win the award and its
$10,000 prize. Appropriately, Whitlock discussed “The Importance of Developing a Distinctive Voice in the New Media."