CRITICAL ISSUES FACING NEWS MEDIA

SUBJECT OF CONFERENCE MARCH 7-8

Critical issues facing the news media will be the subject of a two-day conference opening March 7 that will draw top authorities to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

Five Pulitzer Prize winners as well as the directors of several media foundations will be among the presenters to discuss, “Full Court Press: Facing and Fixing Media Problems.”

“As well as undergoing transformative changes in technology that are shaking up the news industry as never before, journalists are being challenged to gather and report the news accurately from hazardous battlefields in the Middle East to the offices of Washington bureaucrats bent on classifying everything as secret. The journalists are not doing well,” said Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover and conference convener.

Among the topics covered will be “Decline in Print News Media Competence,” “The Inadequacy of Electronic Media,” “Ideology and Government Financing of Media,” “Media Gullibility Covering the War in Iraq and the War on Terror,” “Are The News Media Reluctant To Admit Mistakes?” “Satire and News Reporting,” “Universities, Philanthropies, and Media Owners,” and “Can The Internet Be a Corrective For News Media Ills?”

Participants include: Bob Giles, curator of the Nieman Foundation, Harvard University; Karen Dunlap, president of The Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Fla.; Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting; Jon Sawyer, director of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; Paul Hitlin, content supervisor for the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism; Louis Freedberg, director of the California Media Collaborative; and Lou Ureneck, chair of the Boston University Department of Journalism; John Walcott, Washington Bureau chief of McClatchey papers; and Robert Ferrante, former executive producer of National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."

Pulitzer Prize winners presenting will include Tyler Marshall, co-author of the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism study “The Changing Newsroom”; former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges; Art Howe, chief executive of Verve Wireless; best-selling author David Cay Johnston; and Michael Parks, until recently director of the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communications.

The conference begins at 8 a.m. Saturday, March 7 and concludes at 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 8. Attendance is open to the public by reservation only. The admission fee is $36, which includes all sessions and breakfast and lunch on both days. Students will be able to attend at a 50% discount. Those who wish to attend can reserve by phoning/e-mailing MSLAW Assistant to the Dean Rosa Figueiredo at (978) 681-0800, ext. 113 or rosa@mslaw.edu.

Rooms have been reserved by the law school at a discounted rate at the nearby Wyndham Andover hotel.

The Massachusetts School of Law (MSLAW) is located in Andover, Massachusetts. Its mission is to make practical, affordable, high quality legal education, and resulting social and economic mobility, available to capable but less privileged persons who have been traditionally excluded from the legal profession. #

(Further Information: Sherwood Ross, media consultant to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com; phone 305-205-8281.)

ROSS ASSOCIATES, SUITE 403, 102 S.W. 6TH AVENUE, MIAMI, FLORIDA, 33130