Jacksonville News, AL
02/02/06
Alberto Ibarguen to deliver Ayers Lecture
Feb. 8
SHERRY KUGHN
Consolidated News Service
The 2006 Harry M. and Edel Y. Ayers Lecture, co-sponsored by Jacksonville
State University and The Anniston Star, will feature as its speaker Alberto
Ibargüen, chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation.
Ibargüen, former publisher of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, will speak
on the future of community journalism at 2 p.m. on Feb. 8 on the 11th floor of
Houston Cole Library. The public is invited at no charge.
The lecture is part of an observation of Community Journalism Week in Calhoun
County and will include other events.
Ibargüen started his career in 1984 at the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and
then moved to Newsday in New York. Under Ibargüen’s leadership, the Miami
Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes. El Nuevo Herald won the 2002 Ortega y Gasset
Prize for journalism.
In 2005, he assumed leadership of the Knight Foundation, which is dedicated to
furthering the ideals of service to community, and promotes the highest
standards of journalistic excellence and the defense of a free press.
This year’s lecture will be followed by a two-day conference sponsored by The
Star, the University of Alabama and The Knight Foundation. The conference,
called “A National Conversation on the Emerging Mind of Community
Journalism,” will take place at Zannie Theatre at Buckner Circle at McClellan.
JSU faculty and students can register for the National Conference on Community
Journalism at no cost through Kingsley Harbor, chairman of the JSU Department
of Communication at 782-5300.
Other journalism professionals, academics and students can register for the
conference at www.comj.ua.edu or by calling administrative secretary Amelia
Rowe at 235-3580.
Other conference activities starting on Thursday, Feb. 9, will include speeches
by Richard C. Harwood, founder and president of The Harwood Institute for
Public Innovation and author of Hope Unraveled: The People’s Retreat and Our
Way Back; William Evans, director of the Institute for Communication and
Information Research at the University of Alabama; Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on
the Press, Leadership and Community at the University of Kansas; Wilson
Lowrey, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama College of
Communication and Information Sciences; Harvey Jackson, head of JSU’s
Department of History; and Michael Bugeja, director and professor of
Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State
University and author of “The Interpersonal Divide: The Search for
Community in a Technological Age.”