Bill Knight named 2010 John Hallwas Liberal Arts Lecturer

Bill Knight, an award-winning journalist, professor and deputy director of the journalism program at Western Illinois University, has been named the 2010 John Hallwas Liberal Arts Lecturer in the College of Arts and Sciences.

He will present the Eighth Annual Hallwas Lecture at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7 in the University Union Grand Ballroom at WIU-Macomb and at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8 in Room 102AB at WIU-Quad Cities.

Knight's topic is, "I Read the News Today, Oh, Boy: Journalism, Empathy and the Liberal Arts."

In addition to teaching at Western Illinois since 1991, Knight remains an active columnist, radio commentator and author. He writes twice-weekly columns for newspapers in Pekin, Peoria, Monmouth, Galesburg, Kewanee and now Macomb. The author of the 2003 "Video Almanac" and "Fair Comment: Essays on the Air," Knight is a featured weekly commentator on Western's Tri States Public Radio.

A graduate of WIU (1971) and the University Illinois-Springfield (1982), Knight this month is being named one of a "Golden Dozen" recognized by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) at its annual conference for his opinion piece on moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to Illinois. His writing has also won awards from the Illinois Associated Press (Best Commentary), the Illinois Press Association (Business Reporting), the International Labor Communications Association (Best Column) and the Suburban Newspapers Association of America (Best Sports Writing).

His newest books are "Horse Shoe Bottoms" (2008), a 1930s novel by west-central Illinois journalist and activist Tom Tippett, for which Knight wrote the biographical introduction and edited; and "Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thud Pies" (2007), a collection of rock criticism, essays on popular culture and zany screeds by Johnson, the late Creem magazine writer who had attended WIU.

Knight, a native of Carthage (IL), also is the editor of Western’s College of Arts and Science magazine Focus, which is published twice yearly since Spring 2005.