Skip to Content

Guest Speaker

Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, Kentucky on August 4, 1920. She was reared in Detroit, Michigan where she attended public schools, and later graduated from Wayne State University. The year after college Thomas served as a copy girl on the now defunct Washington Daily News, and joined United Press International in 1943.

For 12 years Thomas had to be at work at 5:30 a.m. to write radio news for U.P.I. She later had several beats around the federal government, including the Department of Justice, F.B.I., Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and Capitol Hill before she began covering President-elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Thomas went to the White House in January 1961 as a member of the U.P.I. team headed by the late Merriman Smith, and was there until May 2000. In July 2000 Thomas became a columnist for the Hearst News Service ’Äì where she continues today.

During the years she covered Kennedy, Thomas was the first woman to close a presidential news conference with the traditional "Thank you, Mr. President."

Thomas served as President of the Women's National Press Club in 1959 - 60, and she was the first woman officer of the National Press Club after it opened its doors to women members for the first time in 90 years. In addition, Thomas became the first woman officer of the White House Correspondents Association in its 50 years of existence, and served as its first woman president in 1975-76. Thomas also became the first woman member of the Gridiron Club in its history, and the first woman to be elected President in 1993.

In 1968 Thomas was named the "Newspaper Woman of Washington" by the American Newspaper Woman's Club, and in 1975, she was named the "Woman of the Year" in communications by Ladies Home Journal. She has also received the Matrix Award from the Women in Communications, and the World Almanac named Helen Thomas as one of the twenty-five most influential women in America.

Thomas has received numerous honorary doctorate degrees, some of the most recent from Brown University, St. Bonaventure University, Michigan State University and the George Washington University. In addition, she has been a commencement speaker at dozens of colleges and has delivered lectures on the White House and the Presidency throughout the country.

Helen Thomas traveled around the world several times with Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton, and covered every economic summit. In February, 1972, she was the only newspaperwoman to travel with President Nixon to China during his breakthrough trip. Since then, she has been to China on many subsequent presidential visits.

Thomas continues to ask her pointed questions of President George W. Bush and his press secretary on a daily basis.

In September, 1971, Pat Nixon scooped Helen Thomas by announcing her engagement to the Associated Press' retiring White House correspondent, Douglas Cornell, at a White House party hosted by the President in honor of Cornell. The late Cornell and Thomas were married on October 16, 1971.

Thomas is the author of the book, Dateline: White House, and her memoir, Front Row at the White House. She is also the author of Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President, and her latest book, Watchdogs of Democracy? about how journalism has changed was released in June 2006.

Helen Thomas has earned numerous awards including:

Board of Advisors

Maurine H. Beasley, former education editor of the Kansas City (Mo.) Star and former staff writer for The Washington Post, is a journalism historian who specializes in women's portrayal and participation in journalism. Her particular focus is Washington women journalists, including their coverage of First Ladies. She was named a Distinguished Senior Scholar by the Educational Foundation of the American Association of University Women and received a Leadership Award in 2001 from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication of which she is a past national president. She also is a former president of the American Journalism Historians Association. She has taught journalism at Jinan University in China under a Fulbright grant, and currently is a Professor at the University of Maryland.

Tom Bettag has been executive producer of daily network news broadcasts for the past 19 years. For the past 14 years, he was executive producer of ABC News Nightline. Between 2000 and 2004, as senior executive producer of Nightline, he did stints as the executive producer of the ABC News broadcasts This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Nightline UpClose.

Mr. Bettag is the recipient of six duPont-Columbia University Silver Batons, three Overseas Press Club Awards and 30 Emmys, among many other accolades. Nightline was recognized in 2002 with a Peabody Award for Broadcast Journalism, citing over 20 years of excellence in long-form presentations.

Prior to joining ABC News in May 1991, Mr. Bettag spent 22 years at CBS News, serving as executive producer of CBS Evening News With Dan Rather from 1986 to 1991. During his tenure as Evening News executive producer, Mr. Bettag spearheaded the network's critically acclaimed coverage of the Chinese student uprising in May, 1989 and along with Mr. Rather, gained the first television interview with Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait.

From 1984 to 1986 Mr. Bettag served as senior broadcast producer of the CBS Evening News. Previously he was senior political producer for CBS News' coverage of "Campaign '84," and senior producer of CBS Evening News from 1982 to 1983. He served as producer for 60 Minutes from 1981 to 1982, and as an associate producer for CBS Evening News from 1977 to 1981. Prior to joining the CBS Evening News he was broadcast producer of CBS Morning News. Mr. Bettag joined CBS News as an assignment editor based in Washington in 1969.

A native of Rockford, Michigan, Mr. Bettag received a BA degree in history from the University of Notre Dame in 1966, and an MS degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1967. He resides in Washington, DC. He and his wife, Claire, have two sons, Carl and Andrew.

Michael L. Blackman, has worked for 33 years as a reporter and editor in Philadelphia, Fort Worth and New York. Blackman earned his bachelor's degree from Baylor University in 1967 and his master's from Ohio State in 1974. Since then he has worked at the Baytown Sun, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati Post, New York Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

He was vice president and executive editor for the Star-Telegram for eight years, editor for two years, and editorial director for three years. He has continued his work there part time since his retirement in 1999, and also worked as senior writer/editor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

A former military policeman in the U. S. Army Reserve and flight-line mechanic in the U. S. Air Force Reserve, Blackman has won a number of awards and presided over staffs that have won numerous local, state and national newspaper awards.

Nate Blakeslee is a senior editor at Texas Monthly. He is the author of Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town (PublicAffairs Books), based on an investigative story written while on the staff of The Texas Observer. A former Observer editor, Nate's writing has also appeared in The Nation and The Progressive. He has received writing awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the State Bar of Texas, and has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and for the Livingston Young Journalist Award. In 2004 he won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for his drug war reporting. He holds a Master of Arts degree in American Civilization from The University of Texas at Austin, a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors from Southwestern University, and is a Soros Justice Media Fellow.

Frederick Blevens holds the BA and MA in journalism from Ball State University and the Ph.D. from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. For 20 years, he was a reporter, copy editor and senior editor at metropolitan newspapers, including the Philadelphia Bulletin, Camden Courier-Post, San Antonio Light, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Houston Chronicle. Dr. Blevens has taught at Ball State, Texas A&M University and Southwest Texas State University. From 2002 to 2006, he served as professor and associate dean in the Gaylord College at the University of Oklahoma, where he founded the Oklahoma Institute for Diversity in Journalism. He currently is professor and associate dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University. His teaching areas include newswriting, editing, information gathering, law and ethics. In 2001, he was recognized as a national Teacher of the Year by the Freedom Forum. He currently is a professor and Associate Dean, School of Journalism, Florida International University.

Roy Blount, Jr. is the author of 20 books, most recently Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South, and including Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans, Robert E. Lee, If Only You Knew How Much I Smell You, Roy Blount's Book of Southern Humor and Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story. Modesty aside, Blount has done more different things than any other humorist- novelist- journalist- dramatist- lyricist- lecturer- reviewer- screenwriter- anthologist- columnist- philologist of sorts he can think of.

Robert Bryce spent twelve years as a reporter for the Austin Chronicle and was recently a senior writer at Interactive Week, with extensive experience covering the energy and telecommunications industries. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Texas Monthly, U.S. News & World report, Salon, and other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Kenneth F. Bunting, Associate Publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was named to that post in August 2005 after nearly 12 years as the newspaper's top editor. He has responsibility for the newspaper's reader and community relations, including editorial standards and practices.

He is also on the editorial board and the executive committee of the newspaper, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation. Bunting came to the Post-Intelligencer as Managing Editor in 1993 and was named Executive Editor in 2000.

During Bunting's tenure as the ranking editor, the "P-I," as it is known locally, won more national and regional awards for journalistic excellence than at any time in its 142-year history.

Prior to his arrival at the P-I, Bunting was Senior Editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

He joined the Star-Telegram as state capitol bureau chief in Austin in 1986, and was later City Editor, Assistant Managing Editor, Deputy Managing Editor and Senior Editor. Bunting also spent nine years at the Los Angeles Times, where he had a variety of reporting and editing assignments, including a stint as a state capitol reporter in Sacramento. In over 35 years of newspaper experience, he has also gathered news, written and edited for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the San Antonio Express-News, the Cincinnati Post and the Sacramento Bee.

He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and history from Texas Christian University; attended law school for a year at Northern Kentucky University; and completed the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business.

A 1970 graduate, he has been a member of the TCU National Alumni Board and is also a former president of the TCU Journalism Exes Association. He is currently on the Board of Visitors for the Schieffer School of Communications at TCU, his alma mater. He is on similar visiting advisory boards for the Manship School of Mass Communications at Louisiana State University and the School of Communications at Middle Tennessee State University.

In 2004, Bunting, along with CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer, author Dan Jenkins and two posthumous honorees, was one of the inaugural inductees into the TCU Journalism Hall of Excellence, a permanent display and tribute to the accomplishments of the school’Äôs distinguished alumni.

Bunting was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2000 and 2001 and was a contributor to an anthology, The Passionate Editor, published in 2004. He is on boards of the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships, the (Seattle) Alliance for Education, the SDX Foundation, P-I Charities, Washington Coalition for Open Government, Seattle CityClub and the Woodland Park Zoo Society.

He grew up in Houston. He and his wife Juli, a former broadcast journalist, have one son, Maxwell, who turned 15 last November.

Wanda Garner Cash teaches journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a fellow to the S. Griffin Singer Professorship. A community newspaper veteran with more than 25 years' experience, Cash previously was editor and publisher of The Baytown Sun, executive editor of The Brazosport (TX) Facts, assistant managing editor of The Galveston County Daily News and editor of the Kerrville (TX) Daily Times. Cash and her husband Richard also owned The Ingram News in rural Central Texas for eight years, winning the Texas Press Association's designation of best weekly in the state in its circulation class in 1985. A past president of the Texas Press Association and Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, she organized a media coalition to push for a Texas shield law in 2005. She has been a TPA member since 1982 and on the board of directors since 1998, working primarily with the Legislative Advisory Committee jointly comprised of members from TPA and the Texas Daily Newspaper Association. Through this group and various other media affiliations, she has been an long-time advocate of open government, testifying at the Legislature, organizing FOI education efforts, lobbying for public access and resisting attempts to limit the public's right to know.

Gail Collins a columnist for the New York Times, was the first woman ever to serve as editorial page editor for the paper. Previously, she was a member of the Times editorial board. She is the author of America’Äôs Women: Four Hundred Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, published by HarperCollins.

Before joining the Times, Ms. Collins was a columnist at New York Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International. Her first jobs in journalism were in Connecticut, where she founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, which provided coverage of the state capitol and Connecticut politics. When she sold it in 1977, the CSNB was the largest news service of its kind in the country, with more than 30 weekly and daily newspaper chains.

Besides America's Women, Ms. Collins is the author of Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics, and The Millennium Book, which she co-authored with her husband, Dan Collins. She is working on a new book about American women since 1960.

Patrick Cox, Ph.D., is Associate Director at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin with administrative responsibilities for the Congressional History Collection, the Sam Rayburn Library and Museum in Bonham, the John Nance Garner Museum in Uvalde and historic preservation projects and programs at Winedale.

The First Texas News Barons, the latest publication by Dr. Cox, focuses on the independent Texas newspaper publishers and the creation of the modern Texas identity. The University of Texas Press published the book in November 2005.

Dr. Cox authored an award winning biography on the late U.S. Senator Ralph W. Yarborough published by the University of Texas Press. Ralph W. Yarborough: The People's Senator was a finalist in the Western Writers Association book awards, the Robert Kennedy Foundation Book Award for 2002, and honorable mention at the Texas Philosophical Society annual book awards. He is co-editor of Profiles in Power: 20th Century Texans in Washington, D. C., published by the University of Texas Press in April 2004.

Gregory Curtis was editor of Texas Monthly from 1981 until 2000. He is the author of Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo. His writing has appeared in Texas Monthly, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Fortune, and Time. He is a graduate of Rice University and San Francisco State College. He lives in Austin, TX with his wife and children.

Lou Dubose has covered Texas politics for twenty-five years. He he followed the career of George W. Bush, for many years as editor of The Texas Observer, and as politics editor of The Austin Chronicle. He is the co-author with Molly Ivins of New York Times Random House bestsellers — Shrub: The Short and Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America. In October 2007, Random House released Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch’s Assault on our Fundamental Rights, his final book with co-author Molly Ivins. In 2003 he wrote, with Texas Monthly writer Jan Reid, The Hammer: Tom DeLay, God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress, released in paperback by Public Affairs in 2006 as The Hammer Comes Down: the Nasty, Brutish and Shortened Political Life of Tom DeLay. In 2006 he wrote, with Texas Observer editor Jake Bernstein: Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency. He currently divides his time between Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C., where he edits The Washington Spectator.

Ronnie Dugger born in Chicago, educated in San Antonio, UT Austin, and Oxford, became the founding editor of The Texas Observer in 1954 and served in that position until 1961. In the mid-1960s he succeeded Mrs. R.D. Randolph as the Observer's owner and publisher; in 1994 he gave the Observer to the Texas Democracy Foundation that had been organized to receive it. He edited Three Men in Texas, Bedichek, Webb, and Dobie (UT Press) from three Observer special issues and wrote a book about a Texas pilot who helped bomb Hiroshima (Dark Star, World, 1967), biographies of Lyndon Johnson The Politician, Norton, 1982) and Ronald Reagan (McGraw-Hill, 1983), and a book about UT and universities (Norton 1973). He has written hundreds of articles for such publications as Harper's, Atlantic, The Nation, the New Yorker, the Progressive, the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Guardian in London, etc. His 26,000-word ’ÄúThe Dangers of Computerized Votecounting’Äù in the New Yorker in 1988 was the foundation of the present national movement against tabulating elections invisibly in computers. He has taught at the University of Virginia, Hampshire College, and the University of Illinois and has held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Shorenstein Center at the Kennedy School, Harvard. In the mid-nineties he proposed and co-founded the Alliance for Democracy, a national grass-roots anti-big-corporate organization. In 2008 he is living in the Boston area while working on more books and essays, as well as now on his poems. His most recent essay in The Texas Observer, “Aggie and Her Killer,” appeared in the Feb. 8, 2008. issue. His e-mail is rdugger123@aol.com.

Douglas Foster, a reporter and editor, is the former editor of Mother Jones magazine and associate professor at Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. He's a regular contributor to major newspapers and magazines, including Smithsonian, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and Columbia Journalism Review. In January, 2007 he began a one-year research leave in South Africa, where he is working on a book about democracy, globalization, and the challenges ahead for the governing African National Congress.

Ellen Goodman's first job was at Newsweek as a researcher, at a time when only men became writers. She landed a job as a reporter for the Detroit Free Press in 1965 and, in 1967, for The Boston Globe where she began writing her column.

A 1963 cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College, Goodman returned to Harvard in 1973-74 as a Nieman Fellow, where she studied the dynamics of social change. Her column was syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group in 1976.

In 1980, Goodman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary.

Goodman's first book, “Turning Points” (Doubleday, 1979), detailed the effect of the changing roles of women on the family. Six collections of her columns have been published: Paper Trail: Common Sense in Uncommon Times (Simon & Schuster, 2004); Close to Home (Simon & Schuster, 1979); At Large (Summit Books, 1981); Keeping in Touch (Summit Books, 1985); Making Sense (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989); and Value Judgments (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993). She is also co-author with Patricia O'Brien of I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women's Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2000).

Ellen Goodman lives in Brookline, Mass., with her husband.

Wade Goodwyn is a correspondent for National Public Radio. He reports on all types of national affairs in Texas, Louisiana and the Southwest. He has been reporting for National Public Radio since 1991. Previously, Goodwyn was a political consultant in New York City.

Goodwyn has reported on the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in Denver, the Olympic Games in Atlanta and the school shootings in Paducah Ky., Jonesboro, Ark., and Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

He is one of the few national reporters who actually credits The Texas Observer when obviously following in the journal's footsteps.

Goodwyn is a graduate of the University of Texas with a degree in history and currently resides in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and two daughters.

Steven Isenberg has been a Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, teaching in the liberal arts honors program since 2002. He was publisher of New York Newsday, and the Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time, as well as the Executive Vice President of The Los Angeles Times; before that Chief of Staff to New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, and after a litigator. He served as interim president of Adelphi University on Long Island, and is now Chairman Emeritus of the Board, and has taught at Davidson, Yale College and Berkeley, where he was president of the Executive Advisory Board of the College of Letters & Science. He is an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford.

Melissa Jones has long been involved in progressive politics and media, the arts, business, and philanthropy. She began a career in broadcasting on commercial and independent radio in Houston, including service on the board of KPFT-FM Radio/Pacifica, and continued that career in Austin. She has worked for the League of Women Voters of the Austin Area and currently serves on the Steering Committee of Annie’Äôs List. Her philanthropy has included participation on the boards of the Houston Endowment and SafePlace. She currently serves on the Settlement Club, Greenlights for Non-Profit Success, and the Texas Democracy Foundation boards. She also serves on the Blanton Museum Council, the Southwestern University Board of Visitors, and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Advisory Council.

Lewis H. Lapham is Editor of Lapham's Quarterly. He also serves as editor emeritus and national correspondent for Harper's Magazine. Mr. Lapham is the author of numerous books, including Money and Class in America, Theater of War, Gag Rule, and, most recently, Pretensions to Empire. The New York Times has likened him to H.L. Mencken; Vanity Fair has suggested a strong resemblance to Mark Twain, and Tom Wolfe compared him to Montaigne.

Mr. Lapham currently writes "Notebook," a bi-monthly column for Harper's that won a National Magazine Award in 1995 for exhibiting "an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity." He has also written for Life, Commentary, The National Review, Yale Literary Magazine, Elle, Forbes, The American Spectator, Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Maclean's, The London Observer, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

A native of San Francisco, Mr. Lapham was educated at Yale College and Cambridge University. He served two terms as editor of Harper's Magazine (1976-1981) and (1983-2006), and during those thirty years, the 157-year-old monthly won fourteen National Magazine Awards.

John Leonard reviews books for The Nation and Harper's, mixed media for CBS News Sunday Morning, and television for New York Magazine. He has been the editor of the New York Times Book Review and literary co-editor of The Nation. His books include Lonesome Rangers, When the Kissing Had to Stop, and The Last Innocent White Man in America.

Eden Lipson has been the children's book editor for The New York Times Book Review for more than fifteen years and is author of The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children.

Eden Lipson is a journalist and for 20 years she has been the Children's Books editor of The New York Times, editing the most comprehensive coverage of children's books available to parents, grandparents, teachers and the general public. Her book, The New York Times Parent's Guide to the Best Books for Children, is in its third edition, and a standard introduction to the field.

Lipson is married, with four children and lives in New York City.

Myra MacPherson is the author of four books, including the Vietnam War classic Long Time Passing and a recent biography of I.F. Stone, All Governments Lie! She was a political reporter at the Washington Post for many years and has also written for the New York Times and numerous magazines, including Vanity Fair. She lives in Palm Desert, California, and Washington, D.C.

David McHam has been teaching journalism since 1961. He was at Baylor from 1961 to 1974, at Southern Methodist University from 1974 to 1998, at the University of Texas at Arlington from 1998 to 2001 and at the University of Houston since. He teaches courses in writing and communication law. He is the author of Law and the Media in Texas, which has been in circulation since 1972. He was named the outstanding journalism teacher in the nation by the Society of Professional Journalists in 1994. He began his career in journalism at The Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald while still in high school. He has worked at The Waco News-Tribune, The Houston Post and the Dallas Times Herald. He has an undergraduate degree from Baylor University and a master's from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

David McNeely is a political columnist in Austin, Texas. McNeely's master's thesis in government was on the 1964 U.S. Senate race that George H. W. Bush lost. He first interviewed George W. Bush in 1978, when Bush was running for Congress. An expert on Texas politics when he joined the Austin American-Statesman in 1978, McNeely retired from the Statesman in 2004. He still writes a weekly column for more than two dozen Texas newspapers, and remains the dean of the Texas Capitol press corps.

McNeely co-taught a course at The University of Texas on "The Press and Politics" -- first with Paul Begala, a consultant who with James Carville ran Bill Clinton's 1992 race, and then with Karl Rove, chief political adviser to George W. Bush as governor, and now as President. McNeely and co-author Jim Henderson have delivered to The University of Texas Press a biography on the powerful late Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, an LBJ aficionado and Democrat who had a large impact on Texas government, including promoting George W. Bush for president.

McNeely in late 2003 married the former Kathryn Longley, a Methodist minister, lawyer and non-profit consultant. Between them the McNeelys have five children and four grandchildren.

Judith Davidson Moyers is president of Public Affairs Television, Inc. (PAT), an independent production company in which she collaborates with her husband, journalist Bill Moyers. PAT has produced more than 300 hours of television for PBS and has won every major broadcast journalism award, including 30 Emmys. Ms. Moyers has also been executive producer of numerous major documentaries. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Currently, she is a director of Ogden Corporation. Previously, she served as a Director of Mutual Funds for Capital Research Group, Paine Webber and on the board of Columbia Residential Realty, Inc.

Ms. Moyers was a trustee and vice-chair of the State University of New York, and a trustee of Hofstra University. She was Director of the Research Foundation of New York State and of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, and was also a founder of the Day Care Council of Nassau County.

Keenly interested in education, Ms. Moyers has served as a U.S. Commissioner to UNESCO, a member of a White House Commission on Children, and a member of the National Governor's Association Task Force on Education and Economic Development.

Ms. Moyers is a graduate of the University of Texas.

Before coming to The Nation he was an editor at The New York Times Magazine and wrote a monthly column about the publishing business ("In Cold Print") for the New York Times Book Review. He is the author of Kennedy Justice (Atheneum, 1977), the American Book Award winner Naming Names and, most recently, A Matter of Opinion. He is co-author with Christopher Cerf of The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, now in its second edition.

Navasky has also served as a Guggenheim Fellow, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and Ferris Visiting Professor of Journalism at Princeton. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities and has contributed articles and reviews to numerous magazines and journals of opinion. He is a graduate of Yale Law School (1959) and Swarthmore College (1954), where he was Phi Beta Kappa with high honors in the social sciences.

In addition to his Nation responsibilities, Navasky is also director of the George Delacorte Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University and a regular commentator on the public radio program Marketplace.

Mr. Navasky, who has three children, lives in New York City with his wife, Anne. He serves on the boards of the Authors Guild, PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kaye Northcott has been a journalist since the 1960s. She was elected editor of The Daily Texan at the University of Texas at Austin in 1965. In 1967, she went to work for The Texas Observer, where she was associate editor, then editor from 1970 to 1976 with Molly Ivins. She has worked as a freelance writer for magazines and public television, and served as press secretary for the political campaigns of John Henry Faulk and Ann Richards. In 1986, she joined the Fort Worth Star Telegram, first as a political reporter, then editor. She has been the editor, for seven years, of Texas Co-op Power magazine. Kaye Northcott is a former president of the Texas Institute of Letters. In 2007 she received the George W. Haggard Memorial Journalism Award from the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Larry Norwood spent 28 years in media and corporate relations, philanthropy, advertising and corporate television with AT&T in Austin, Dallas, Birmingham and New Orleans. Prior to working as publications editor at Tulane University, he was a Navy journalist, serving aboard an aircraft carrier during two Gulf of Tonkin cruises. He also worked in public relations at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and edited petroleum industry trade journals in Dallas and Houston after working as a reporter for the Corsicana Daily Sun. He has been vice chair of the Texas Book Festival and is a member of the Friends of the LBJ National Historical Park. He is on the board of CORD, a Waco-based education nonprofit organization and is a former member of the board of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

Karen Olsson is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and a former editor of The Texas Observer. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Baffler, The Nation, and other publications. She has also won awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies for best investigative reporting and best news feature. She lives in Austin, Texas. Waterloo is her first novel.

John Pope a reporter for The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, is a member of the newspaper's team that won two Pulitzer Prizes, a George Polk Award and a National Headliner Award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. A medical/health reporter for 20 years, he has held fellowships in public health at the University of Maryland's Knight Center for Advanced Journalism and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and he was a Hearst Foundation visiting fellow at the University of Texas. Pope, who earned bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Texas, met Molly Ivins in 1971, when he was covering the Texas Legislature for The Daily Texan, the student newspaper.

Dan Rather was born in Wharton, Texas, and grew up in a working class neighborhood of Houston. His father worked as an oil pipeliner. Neither of his parents had been to college and his father had never finished high school, but his mother was determined to see Dan graduate and go on to college. He entered Sam Houston State College in Huntsville, Texas with the hope of winning a football scholarship. He never achieved the gridiron glory he dreamed of, but he made important progress toward a career in journalism, editing the college paper and working part time at a small radio station. While still in college he worked as a reporter for Associated Press and United Press International.

After graduation, he was hired by The Houston Chronicle and its affiliated radio station, KTRH. He became news director of KTRH in 1956 and a reporter for KTRK-TV Houston in 1959. By 1961 he was news director for KHOU-TV, the CBS affiliate in Houston. His coverage of Hurricane Carla brought him to the attention of network executives and he became a network correspondent. As the CBS correspondent in Dallas during the assassination of President Kennedy, his grave but steady demeanor helped to reassure a nation in crisis, and his thorough professionalism won him a national reputation.

Dan Rather replaced the venerable Walter Cronkite as the anchor for The CBS Evening News in 1981. Rather also served as reporter and host for prime-time news programs such as 48 Hours and 60 Minutes I (with Mike Wallace), making him one of American television's most prominent journalists for five decades. He has written several books, including The Camera Never Blinks (1977) and The American Dream: Stories From the Heart of Our Nation (2001).

Geoff Rips was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. He is a former editor of The Texas Observer and has been a Soros Open Society Institute Fellow. He has worked as the Freedom-to-Write Committee coordinator for PEN American Center and was principal author of its report, UnAmerican Activities (City Lights Books, 1981). Rips has worked with community organizations along the Texas/Mexico border to bring water and wastewater services to border colonias. He has published poetry, fiction and journalism in various places over the years. He recently released his debut novel, The Truth. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, Nancy Maniscalco, and two daughters, Gabriela and Sascha.

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine, which is one of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country. Rothschild has appeared on Nightline, C-SPAN, The O'Reilly Factor, and NPR, and his newspaper commentaries have run in the Chicago Tribune, the L.A. Times, the Miami Herald, and a host of other newspapers.

Ben Sargent. A sixth-generation Texan, born at Amarillo in 1948 into a newspaper family. Learned the printing trade from age 12 and started working for the local daily as a proof runner at 14. Attended Amarillo College and received a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1970.

Worked as a reporter for five years, mainly covering the State Capitol, for The Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Long News Service, The Austin American-Statesman and United Press International. Started drawing editorial cartoons for the American-Statesman in August, 1974. Distributed nationally by Universal Press Syndicate.

Winner of the 1982 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, and Pulitzer finalist in 2001 and 2002. Women in Communications Inc. “Outstanding Communicator” award, 1981. Texas Women's Political Caucus media award, 1982. Headliners' Club of Texas special journalism award, 1983. Free Press Association's “Mencken Award,” 1988. University of Texas “Outstanding Young Texas Exes” award, 1989. Common Cause of Texas public-service award in journalism, 1990. Amarillo College's first “Distinguished Alumnus Award,” 1993. Cox Newspapers' “Best of Cox” award for editorial cartooning, 1996 and 1999. Texas Intercollegiate Press Association “Hall of Fame,” 2004. Cited by the Austin Chronicle as “Best Reason to Read the Statesman,” 2008.

Member of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, serving as vice president 1986-88 and as president, 1988-89. A founding director of the Austin Steam Train Association Inc., serving as board secretary and chairman of the board, and qualified as a steam-locomotive fireman, conductor and brakeman. Active amateur letterpress printer, whose shop includes a 1903 Chandler & Price job press and 243 fonts of handset type. Former member of the Vestry of St. Mark's Episcopal Church and of the boards of directors of the Newspaper Employees Credit Union and Austin Municipal Federal Credit Union.

Author of Texas Statehouse Blues (1980) and Big Brother Blues (1984), both published by Texas Monthly Press.

Married to Diane Holloway, American-Statesman television critic, with a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Sam.

Connie Schultz is a columnist for The Plain Dealer newspaper for which she won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, beating Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times and Tommy Tomlinson of The Charlotte Observer. Schultz was also a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing. Schultz was a contributor to the online political blog The Huffington Post. She was raised in Ashtabula, Ohio and received a journalism degree from Kent State University in 1979. Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. Because of her husband's campaign for U.S. Senate, Schultz took a leave of absence from The Plain Dealer and actively campaigned across the state of Ohio. She returned to The Plain Dealer in January 2007.

Schultz's first book, a collection of her previously published columns, was printed in 2006. Her second book, a journal of her experiences on the campaign trail, was released in 2007.

Robert Siegel, a senior host of NPR's award-winning evening newsmagazine All Things Considered, got started in radio news when he was a college freshman in 1964. He's still at it.

As a host, Siegel has reported from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Israel. He now concentrates on domestic stories. During the fall of 1992, Siegel took a short leave from the show to anchor Talk of the Nation, NPR's nationwide live call-in program. Before joining All Things Considered in 1987, Siegel served for four years as director of NPR's News and Information Department, overseeing production of NPR's newsmagazines All Things Considered and Morning Edition, as well as special events and other news programming. During his tenure, NPR launched its popular Saturday and Sunday newsmagazine Weekend Edition. Siegel joined NPR in December 1976 as an associate producer, and was appointed public affairs editor in 1977 and senior editor in 1978. In 1979, Siegel was chosen to open NPR's London bureau, where he worked as senior editor until 1983.

From 1971 to 1976, Siegel worked for WRVR Radio in New York City as a reporter, host, and director of news and public affairs. While at WRVR, he was one of a team that received an Armstrong Award for the series "Rockefeller's Drug Law." Before going to WRVR, he was morning news reporter and telephone talk show host for WGLI Radio in Babylon, New York.

Siegel shared in NPR's 1994/95 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for "The Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution," NPR's coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. His coverage of the peace movements in East and West Germany earned him a 1984 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for excellence in broadcast journalism. Siegel's two-part documentary "Murder, Punishment, and Parole in Alabama" earned the 1997 American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. The series revealed a criminal justice system beset by the financial difficulties of keeping violent offenders in long-term incarceration. His other awards include the National Mental Health Association's 1991 Mental Health Award for his interviews conducted on the streets of New York in an All Things Considered story, "The Mentally Ill Homeless."

A graduate of New York's Stuyvesant High School and Columbia University, Siegel began his career in radio at the college radio station WKCR-FM where he anchored coverage of the 1968 Columbia demonstrations. The station's work received an award from the Writers Guild of America East.

Siegel is the editor of The NPR Interviews 1994, The NPR Interviews 1995, and The NPR Interviews 1996 — compilations of NPR's most popular radio conversations from each year.

Erna Smith has been a professor of journalism at San Francisco State University since 1989. Prior to teaching, she worked for 15 years as a reporter, editor and copy editor at several newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Minneapolis Star and the Wall Street Journal. She is the former chair of the Journalism Department at San Francisco State University and is an expert in diversity issues in journalism and journalism education. The author of several studies on race and the media, Erna was a fellow at Harvard University’Äôs Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy, where she conducted a study of television news coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. For her work, she has received several honors, including the Barry Bingham Fellowship from the National Council of Editorial Writers and the Distinguished Service award from the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Paul Stekler's documentary work about American politics and society, films that have won multiple Emmys, duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards, and George Foster Peabody Awards, include: Last Man Standing (broadcast on PBS's P.O.V. series). George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire (winner of an Emmy and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival); Vote for Me: Politics in America, a four-hour documentary series about grassroots electoral politics (winner of an Emmy, a George Foster Peabody Award and a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award); and two segments of the Eyes on the Prize II series on the history of civil rights. Dr. Stekler has a doctorate in Government from Harvard University, has written about Southern politics, and was a political consultant in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has taught at the University of Texas' nationally recognized RTF film program since 1997 (http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/stekler). He hosts a weekly statewide Texas PBS series, SPECIAL SESSION, on state politics and the legislature. Stekler is also the Director of Research of the LBJ School of Public Affairs' Center for Politics and Governance.

Mimi Swartz rejoined the staff of Texas Monthly as an executive editor in April 2001. Before that time she was a staff writer at Talk Magazine from 1999 to 2001 and a staff writer at The New Yorker from 1997 to 1999. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and many other national publications. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994.

Swartz worked at Texas Monthly from 1984 to 1997, first as an associate editor, and then as a senior editor. In 1996 she was nominated for two National Magazine Awards, for "Not What the Doctor Ordered," in the public interest category, and "Silicone City," in the feature category, and won for "Not What the Doctor Ordered."

Swartz grew up in San Antonio, and now lives in Houston with her husband John Wilburn and son, Sam.

Saralee Tiede director of communications at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has been an award-winning political reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Dallas Times Herald and the Dallas Morning News and a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. She also served as Executive Assistant to former Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby and in communications positions for the Texas Heath and Human Services Commission, the University of Houston System and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce.

Calvin Trillin has been acclaimed in fields of writing that are remarkably diverse. As someone who has published solidly reported pieces in The New Yorker for thirty years, he has been called "perhaps the finest reporter in America". His antic commentary on the American scene- which now appears weekly in Time magazine, and his books chronicling his adventures as a "happy eater" have earned him renown as "a classic American humorist". His best-selling book Remembering Denny was hailed as "an elegiac, disturbing and altogether brilliant memoir".

Trillin began his career as a writer for Time and then became a staff writer for The New Yorker, and then a columnist for The Nation. There he wrote what USA Today called "simply the funniest regular column in journalism". That column became syndicated from 1986 through 1995. In 1996, he returned to Time as a weekly columnist. To date the column has been collected in five books.

James Willse is the editor of the Newark Star-Ledger, a Newhouse/Advance Publications newspaper. Since Jim Willse became editor of the Star-Ledger in 1995, the newspaper has greatly expanded its commitment to comprehensive coverage of New Jersey--news, business, sports, and the arts. Mr. Willse was previously director of new media for Advance Publications newspaper group after serving as editor and publisher of the New York Daily News. A New York City native, Jim Willse was city editor and managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner and an editor with the Associated Press in New York and San Francisco.

Skip to Main Navigation