Some of the top journalists in the area will discuss the state of news in today’s world during a panel discussion at Monroe County Community College March 26.
The panel is part of Monroe County’s One Book, One Community program, which this year is reading “News of the World,” by Paulette Jiles.
Journalism is threatened from a variety of directions, and the panel members will discuss some of the challenges and how they’re coping.
Panel members include the managing editor of the Toledo Blade, the program director of Michigan Radio and an MLive editor.
The panel discussion will begin at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, in the La-Z-Boy Center at MCCC.
The event is sponsored by the Agora, the student newspaper at MCCC, and the moderators will be James P. Quick and Cassidy Maier, current editors of the newspaper.
The panel members include:
Dave Murray, the managing editor of The Blade, Toledo's daily newspaper. He is responsible for the news content of the newspaper and its multiple news websites. He has worked at The Blade for 39 years and has been managing editor since 2009. He was the editor of three Blade investigations that were named Pulitzer finalists, one of them winning the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2004. He’s a graduate of Ohio State University.
Zoe Clark is Michigan Radio’s program director, overseeing all programming on the state’s largest public radio station – including the station’s award-winning daily news-magazine, “Stateside.” She also co-hosts “It’s Just Politics,” a weekly look at Michigan politics. She studied at George Washington University and graduated from the University of Michigan.
Khalil AlHajal is an evening editor and special projects manager at MLive and The Ann Arbor News. He previously ran MLive's Detroit bureau, and before that worked as a crime reporter in Flint. He’s a graduate of the University of Michigan Dearborn.
In “News of the World,” a former newspaper printer travels from town to town in 1870s Texas, reading from newspapers to audiences hungry for news.
People are just as hungry for news today, but they have many more sources, including some that are “fake” or designed to mislead, according to Dan Shaw, journalism professor at MCCC and adviser to the Agora.
“Traditional news organizations face attacks from national leaders, from financial challenges, and from audiences that are polarized, looking for news from a particular perspective,” he said.
“Journalists today, regardless of their platform, need to cut through the chaos and provide facts and information to a public that is just as hungry for news as 150 years ago.”
The panel members will answer questions on these issues and more, Shaw said.