Jersey City, N. J. – The Saint Peter’s College department of history and department of communication will host the Fourth Annual Media and History Conference on Thursday, April 7, 2011. Taking place on the College’s Jersey City campus in Pope Lecture Hall from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the theme for this year’s conference is “If It Bleeds, It Leads: Reporting on War and Crime.”
Ford Risley, Ph.D., professor of journalism at Pennsylvania State University, will deliver the opening keynote address at 10:00 a.m. “Newspapers Make War: America’s Civil War Press.” He is the author of The Abolitionist Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery and The Civil War: Primary Documents on Events from 1860 to 1865. He is a past president of the American Journalism Historians Association and also served on the association’s board of directors. His book, Abolition and the Press: The Moral Struggle Against Slavery, won the American Journalism Historians Association’s award for the best book on media history published in 2008.
Two panels will be held at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. The first will address the subject, “Breaking News about Broken Hearts: Ethics and Immorality in Crime Reporting,” and will be chaired by Rev. John Wrynn, S.J., chair of the history department at Saint Peter’s College. The second will discuss the topic, “The Words of War: Two Generations of G.I.’s,” and will be chaired by Ernabel Demillo, instructor of communication at Saint Peter’s College. The College’s faculty and students will serve as panelists for both discussions.
At 1:00 p.m., reporter Mike Sheehan will provide the closing keynote address, “My Life in Crime: How and Ex-Cop Reports True Crime Stories.” Sheehan is a correspondent at WPIX-TV/PIX 11 News. Prior to WPIX, he was a senior correspondent at Fox 5 TV where he hosted the award-winning "New York’s Most Wanted.” He has been nominated for a half-dozen Emmy awards, including his on-the-scene coverage of the attacks of September 11th. Before coming into the news business, Sheehan was a highly decorated detective with the NYPD, where he spent most of his years investigating homicides, including the murder of John Lennon and the “preppy murder’ case. Sheehan is currently working on a book about the many notorious crimes he witnessed as a detective and a reporter on the streets of New York.
As part of the conference, O’Toole Library is featuring the exhibits, “Six Iconic Crimes: Violence Through the Decades” and “War in Print: Books and Images from the O’Toole Library Collection.”
The event is open to the public and admission is free.
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Contact:
Sarah Malinowski
(201) 761-6239