SALZBURG, Austria (Aug 16) — University students from five continents met today with world leaders from five continents in an extraordinary hour-long panel and question-and-answer session held at Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria. Journalist Yang Rui, the anchor of a daily prime-time current-affairs talk show on CCTV in China, chaired the panel of students from the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change and leaders from the Salzburg Trilogue. Yang prodded them all with provocative comments: “I like using the word ‘division,’” he said. “It helps clarify where the lines of difference are.”
» More

SALZBURG, Austria (Aug 13) — “One of the problems for us all is that we are not, and cannot often be aware of what’s going on that the camera hasn’t focused on,” said Academy-award winning actress Vanessa Redgrave in a conversation to an audience of students attending the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, a program jointly led by the Salzburg Global Seminar, in Salzburg, Austria, and the International Center for Media & Public Agenda at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Courage comes partly from a feeling that you really are expressing something that is the truth.’

Speaking with students and faculty from five continents and fifteen countries, Ms. Redgrave drew connections between the responsibilities of an actor and those of journalists. “When I was told today about the main fundamental ground on which these courses in which you’re all taking part are based—Media and Global Change—I immediately remembered the Latin slogan that flew on the flag above Shakespeare’s Globe Theater… Totus Mundus Agit Histrionem. ‘All the world moves the actor’ is actually what I think is the direct translation, as opposed to ‘All the world’s a stage.’ All the world moves the actor, by which can be considered not only the professional actor, but the individual—the individuals who find themselves in the world.”
» More

Gena Fitzgerald, an award-winning broadcast journalist and media strategist, has been named executive director of the Journalism Center on Children & Families. Dedicated to supporting exemplary reporting on children and families, the Journalism Center is a nonprofit affiliate of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Since 1993, more than 10,000 journalists have used this unique resource to find information, balanced sources, training and ideas to thoroughly cover critical social issues.

Read the full release here.

Eight students in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism have won three prestigious Telly Awards in this year’s annual contest. The Telly, in it’s 29th year, honors outstanding local, regional and cable television programs as well as video and film productions.

All the students were in the college’s Long Form Broadcast Journalism course (JOUR323/623) taught by Dr. Lee Thornton, the Richard Eaton Chair in Broadcast Journalism and a former producer and reporter for CBS News and CNN.
» More

The Chicago Tribune’s expansive investigation of child product safety, The Dallas Morning News’s iconic photographs of people living at the margins of society and 20/20’s compelling portrait of families looking for a better life in Camden, N.J., were among the winners of the 2008 Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism. The medals are presented by the Journalism Center on Children & Families and funded by the center’s primary funder, The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Read the full release here.

Three of the nation’s top newspaper professionals and one of the nation’s top emerging scholars in broadcast and multi-media have joined the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, Dean Tom Kunkel announced.

The Baltimore Sun’s Sandy Banisky, The Washington Post’s Leslie Walker, ESPN’s Kevin Blackistone and Dr. Ron Yaros, currently of the University of Utah, will begin teaching in the fall as the Abell Professor in Baltimore Journalism, the Knight Visiting Professor in Digital Innovation, the Shirley Povich Chair in Sports Journalism and as an assistant professor, respectively.
» More

The Philip Merrill College of Journalism broke ground on May 22 on the $30 million John S. and James L. Knight Hall.

Merrill Dean Tom Kunkel, University President C.D. “Dan” Mote Jr., Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch and other dignitaries and donors celebrated the start of construction with a private luncheon and a public ceremony that afternoon.
» More

Memo from Provost Nariman Farvardin:

TO: Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Philip Merrill College
of Journalism

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Lee Thornton as Interim
Dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, effective June 11, 2008.
» More

Robert J. Richardson won the 2007 national Mark of Excellence award in television feature photography, the Society of Professional Journalists announced. The staffs of Terp Weekly Edition and Maryland Newsline were national finalists in the radio show and affiliated Web site categories.

National winners and finalists were previously recognized by receiving first place in one of SPJ’s 12 regional competitions. The winners were selected from more than 3,400 entries in 39 categories.

See the complete list of 2007 Mark of Excellence winners.

Earlier:
Merrill Students Win Big in Region 2 Mark of Excellence Awards

The National Association of Black Journalists has named a Philip Merrill College of Journalism professor and an alumna as its Journalist of the Year and its Emerging Journalist of the Year, respectively.

The 3,300-member association last week selected Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts as its Journalist of the Year for his work in 2007. The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist is a visiting professor at the College.

NABJ also named the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune’s Sarah Hoye as its Emerging Journalist of the Year. Hoye earned her master of journalism degree in 2003 from the College.

The Special Honors are among the most-coveted annual awards given by NABJ. The awards will be formally presented July 26 at the NABJ Salute to Excellence Gala that will be part of the Unity: Journalists of Color convention in Chicago.

Journalist of the Year is given to a black journalist who has distinguished himself or herself during the year with work that was extraordinary in depth, scope or significance to people in the African diaspora. Pitts was recognized as a widely respected columnist whose strength and background show through his columns, which “speak to those silenced by poverty, violence and discrimination,” in the words of NABJ President Barbara Ciara.

The Emerging Journalist of the Year recognizes a black journalist with fewer than five years of experience whose work displays a commitment to NABJ’s goal of outstanding achievement by black journalists and to providing balanced coverage of the black community and society at large.

Hoye, who had already held jobs at the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before moving to Tampa, was honored for her exceptional work and for her abilities in multimedia reporting, which have made a great impact on her newsroom and on NABJ.

The association said that at a time when diversity in newsrooms is being shunted aside for the bottom line, the awards are not only important for the individual winners but also to recognize their voices and craft in a dwindling newsroom.

Founded in 1975, NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the nation. It is headquartered at the University of Maryland, College Park.