University Park, Pa. — Three respected journalists and an award-winning journalism critic will visit the University Park campus and discuss "The Press and the Presidential Election: How the News Media Covered the 2008 Campaign" at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, in the HUB-Robeson Center Auditorium.
The post-election panel will focus on the challenges, highlights and missteps of reporting on the recently completed presidential election -- an historic, expensive and nuanced endeavor that determined Barak Obama would serve as the next president of the United States.
Panelists include: Barbara Barr, a reporter for WGAL-TV in Lancaster.; Carrie Budoff Brown, a staff writer for Politico.com; David Greene, a National Public Radio correspondent; and Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, based in Washington, D.C.
Along with interaction among the panelists, the session, which is free to the public, will include time for questions from the audience. The panel is sponsored by the Department of Journalism and the Don Davis Program in Ethical Leadership.
Barbara Barr, a Lancaster native and WGAL's York County reporter, has worked for television stations in Maine, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. She brings a local television perspective to the panel and, as the only member of the group from the Keystone State, expertise of how the election played out in Pennsylvania.
Carrie Budoff Brown has been with Politico.com since 2007 and reports on the U.S. Senate. Before that, she was a Pennsylvania political reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and worked for the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, where she covered city and state government in Connecticut’s capital city.
David Greene joined National Public Radio in February 2005 as a White House correspondent. His coverage of the policies and people at the White House may be heard on NPR programs such as "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered," "Weekend Edition," "Day to Day" and "Talk of the Nation." Before joining NPR, Greene was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.
Tom Rosenstiel designed the Project for Excellence in Journalism and serves as its director. He also is vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an initiative engaged in conducting a national conversation among journalists about standards and values. In 2004, Project for Excellence in Journalism and its “State of the News Media” project earned the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism, which honors work that evaluates news media coverage of significant subjects or issues.
A journalist for more than 20 years, Rosenstiel is a former media critic for the Los Angeles Times and chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek magazine. His work has appeared in Esquire, The New Republic, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and The Washington Monthly, among others. A former media critic for MSNBC’s "The News With Brian Williams," he is a frequent commentator on radio and television and in print.