Visiting Journalist Gene Roberts Delivered 2008 Caulfield Lecture

Pultizer Prize-winning author, journalist and professor Gene Roberts delivered "Judging Race: The Press & Civil Rights," the 2008 Muriel and Clarence J. Caulfield Memorial Lecture, on Tuesday, March 11 at 8 pm in McGuire Hall in the Andrew White Student Center on Loyola College's North Charles Street campus. The address was followed by a question-and-answer period, book signing and reception. Read the press release for more about Gene Roberts.

This year's Caulfield Lecture was part of "Judge, Judge Not," Loyola's 2008 Humanities Symposium. The Symposium, inspired by Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, focuses on themes of moral and ethical reasoning, which are quite relevant to Roberts' examination of press coverage of the civil rights movement.

Roberts and co-author Hank Klibanoff, managing editor of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History for their book, The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Few journalists know the race beat better than Roberts, who began his career covering the issue at papers throughout the South, including the Raleigh News & Observer, the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and the Goldsboro News Argus.

In 1965, Mr. Roberts became chief southern and civil rights correspondent for The New York Times. He later served for 18 years as executive editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, where his staff won 17 Pulitzer Prizes. In 1991, he joined the faculty of the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. In 1993, he won the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. From 1994 to 1997, he took a leave from his faculty position to serve as managing editor of The New York Times.

Hosted by the Communication Department, the Caulfield Lecture brings journalists and commentators of national stature to Loyola every year.