Veteran journalist to serve in-residence
Special to the Observer
Jay T. Harris, former publisher of the San Jose Mercury News and executive editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, will deliver a lecture, "Journalism, Democracy and the `American Experiment'" at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Notre Dame. The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Room 127 Hayes-Healy Center.
Harris, who recently was appointed Annenberg Professor of Journalism and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, is the 2002-03 journalist-in-residence at Notre Dame. During his time on campus, he'll meet with students and faculty as well as speak in classes associated with the University's John W. Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics & Democracy.
Currently the Robert C. Maynard Fellow in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Harris will be founding director of the Center for the Study of Journalism and Democracy at USC. His move to journalism education follows a career that includes wide-ranging experience as a reporter, columnist, editor and publisher.
From 1994 to 2001, Harris was chairman and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, a position from which he resigned to protest the economic expectations of the newspaper's parent corporation. His resignation sparked a national debate within the news business over what are reasonable and legitimate levels of profit in work protected by the First Amendment and involving the public trust.
Harris was executive editor of the Philadelphia Daily News from 1985 to 1988. Previously he served in Washington as a national correspondent and columnist for Gannett News Service.
Between 1975 and 1982, he was on the faculty of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he was assistant dean. In 1978, he designed the American Society of Newspaper Editors' annual census of minority employment in daily newspapers.
A member of the Pulitzer Prize Board of Directors and the National Advisory Board of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., Harris has received honorary doctorates from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (his alma mater) and Santa Clara University in California.
Activities of the journalist-in-residence are sponsored with a gift from Keiko and Matt Storin of South Bend. A 1964 Notre Dame alumnus, Matt Storin was editor of the Boston Globe from 1993 until 2001. He recently became associate vice president for news and information at Notre Dame, where he served as the University's first journalist-in-residence in 1997.
All News Stories for Friday, October 4, 2002
