Two award-winning journalists who have played major roles in high-profile investigative reporting efforts in recent months and throughout their careers will speak at the annual Foster-Foreman Conference of Distinguished Writers, a series of free public lectures Oct. 23 and Oct. 24 on the University Park campus.
Julie K. Brown, an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, and Ken Dilanian, an NBC News correspondent who covers national security and intelligence in Washington, D.C., will share examples of their work and participate in question-and-answer sessions.
Brown will be featured at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, in Schwab Auditorium and Dilanian will be featured at 10:35 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 24, in Freeman Auditorium of the HUB-Robeson Center.
Brown’s reporting in late 2018 revealed a secret plea deal from a decade earlier that allowed wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein to avoid federal charges related to a sex ring he operated. Her work led federal officials to take a second look at what had happened in the case. Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and later committed suicide. During her 25-year career, Brown has worked as a general assignment reporter, crime and courts reporter, education reporter, night city editor, enterprise editor and a member of the Herald’s investigative team.
She has earned numerous awards, including a George Polk Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights story of the year for her 2014 series about abuse and corruption in Florida prisons. Prior to the Herald, Brown worked for the Philadelphia Daily News and other small suburban Philadelphia papers. She is a graduate of Temple University.
Dilanian reports and writes for various NBC News platforms, including "Nightly News," "TODAY," NBCNews.com and MSNBC. He previously wrote about intelligence and security for the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was a foreign correspondent covering the Iraq war.
At the Inquirer, he won awards for investigative reporting on conflicts of interest in the state legislature, abuses in personal care homes and deaths among children under state supervision. He graduated from Williams College.
The conference was designed to bring students together with standout journalists and is an opportunity for students to acquaint themselves with distinguished role models in the profession.