Pulitzer Prize-winner will cover 'the Race Beat’ Thursday

Hank Klibanoff is the former managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Hank Klibanoff

The Race Beat: Then & Now
Thursday, Oct. 8
4:30 p.m.
Pollack Auditorium

On Oct. 8, Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist Hank Klibanoff will talk about “the Race Beat: Then & Now” in a public lecture in Pollack Auditorium.

Klibanoff is the former managing editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and his book, “The Race Beat,” won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History. It charts the evolution of the press's coverage of the civil rights movement, with a specific focus on why the press ignored the movement for so long, why it finally started paying attention, and what impact that attention had.

“Eileen McNamara and I have been trying to get Hank to our campus ever since his incredible book - which Eileen actually uses in one of her classes- came out,” said Journalism Program Director Maura Jane Farrelly. “His book highlights not only the obligation that the press has to confront Americans with the often painful moral shortcomings that afflict our culture, but also the power that the press has to affect positive, and even revolutionary change in a given society.

“My hope is that the people who hear his lecture will walk away with an understanding of the vital role that the news industry plays in sustaining, expanding, and realizing the democratic and pluralistic ideals upon which this country was founded,” Farrelly continued.

Klibanoff’s talk is co-sponsored by the Journalism Program, the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the Department of American Studies, the Social Justice and Social Policy Program, and Gen Ed Now.