State legislator keynotes Spring J-Day

The importance of journalism to democracy is the subject of the 13th Annual Spring Journalism Day on Monday, March 9, when an Illinois lawmaker who used to be a newspaper reporter will speak in the Union Sandburg Theater.

David Leitch has been a Republican State Representative from west-central Illinois for 20 years and before that was a reporter for the Peoria Journal Star and president of Local 86 of The Newspaper Guild labor union there.

The presentation will be less than an hour starting at 3 p.m. that day, including a question/answer session for students.

Re-elected without opposition in November, the 60-year-old Leitch (shown above) now serves on committees including Housing & Urban Development, Appropriations-Human Services, Environment & Energy, and Public Utilities, and is an Assistant Minority Leader in the House. He’s most active in efforts to reform education and the state’s mental health system and in advocating for economic development and health-care issues.

His appearance is sponsored by the Western Society of Professional Journalists and the Visiting Lectures Committee

Ebony, Jet editors on campus Wednesday

Editors of Ebony and Jet magazines will be joined by WIU faculty and Western Journalism students on Wednesday for two panels in the University Union addressing the topic “The Past, Present and Future of Minority Media.”

Ebony Senior Editor Sylvester Monroe (above) and Jet Managing Editor Mira Lowe (above right) will take part in a 9:30-10:30 a.m. Lincoln Room panel about minority participation in media also featuring WIU students Robert Amaefule and Alisha Cowan and WIU faculty members Lisa Barr and Mohammad Siddiqi. Amaefule is president of the campus chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and Cowan is editor of the Western Courier and a former Ebony intern. Barr is NABJ’s faculty adviser and Siddiqi director of Western’s Journalism program.

From 2-3:30 p.m. in the Capitol Rooms, Barr will moderate a discussion of media depictions of African Americans now and in the 1960s, when the federal Kerner Commission studied dozens of riots in 1967. Panelists will include Safoura A. Boukari and Jo-Ann Morgan of WIU’s African American Studies department, and Bill Knight and Pearlie Strother-Adams of WIU’s Journalism program.

A reception will follow in the Sandburg Lounge.

The College of Arts and Sciences and the Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center also assisted in the program.

Environmental Journalism students visit wind farm

WIU grad student Catt Foy took this photo of the Crescent Ridge wind farm in rural Bureau County, where the Journalism 400 Topics class in Environmental Journalism recently visited.

The class blog is at http://qc-green.blogspot.com/