Update--Ayers Lecture Feb. 8--
JSU Faculty/Students May Register
for Ayers Lecture at No Cost

By Sherry Kughn The 2006 Harry M. and Edel Y. Ayers Lecture, co-sponsored by Jacksonville State University and The Anniston Star, will feature Alberto Ibargüen, chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation, as speaker. Ibargüen, former publisher of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, will speak at 2 p.m. on Wed., Feb. 8 on the 11th floor of Houston Cole Library. The public is invited at no charge. Ibargüen will speak on the future of community journalism. The lecture is part of an observation of Community Journalism Week in Calhoun County and will include other events. Ibargüen started his career in 1984 at the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and then moved to Newsday in New York. Under Ibargüen's leadership, the Miami Herald won three Pulitzer Prices. El Nuevo Herald won the 2002 Ortega y Gasset Prize for journalism. In 2005, he assumed leadership of the Knight Foundation, which is dedicated to furthering the ideals of service to community, and promotes the highest standards of journalistic excellence and the defense of a free press. This year's lecture will be followed by a two-day conference sponsored by The Star, the University of Alabama and The Knight Foundation. The conference, called "A National Conversation on the Emerging Mind of Community Journalism," will take place at Zannie Theatre at Buckner Circle at McClellan. The Ayers Lecture at JSU is open to the public. JSU faculty and students can register for the National Conference on Community Journalism at no cost through Kingsley Harbor, chairman of the JSU Department of Communication at (256) 782-5300. Other journalism professionals, academics and students can register for the conference at a fee online at www.comj.ua.edu or by calling Administrative Secretary Amelia Rowe at (256) 235-3580. Thursday's conference will include speeches by Richard C. Harwood, founder and president of The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation and author of Hope Unraveled: The People's Retreat and Our Way Back; William Evans, director of the Institute for Communication and Information Research at the University of Alabama; Peggy Kuhr, Knight Chair on the Press, Leadership and Community at the University of Kansas; Wilson Lowrey, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences; Harvey Jackson, head of JSU's Department of History; and Michael Bugeja, director and professor of Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University and author of "The Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age." Other notables in the field of communication will take part in panel discussions throughout the day. For information about the conference, including how to register, visit www.comj.ua.edu and click on The Emerging Mind of Community Journalism, or call Amelia Rowe at 256-235-3580, or Kingsley Harbor, the head of JSU's Department of Communication at (256) 782-5300. The annual Letter Writer's Banquet sponsored by The Star will be Tuesday, February 7, and is by invitation only.

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