Media Advisory: 'Truth Telling in a Time of Turbulence' – Free Webinar Launches Journalism Scholarship to Promote Diversity

Sept. 29, 2020

Media Advisory: 'Truth Telling in a Time of Turbulence' – Free Webinar Launches Journalism Scholarship to Promote Diversity

What: The University of Arizona School of Journalism will hold a webinar with three leading journalists discussing current events to promote the school's new Nancy and Bob Maynard Diversity in Journalism Scholarship.
When: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 5 p.m. (PT)
Where: The webinar will be presented via Zoom. Registration is required.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Three prominent journalists will discuss the election, COVID-19 and racial reckoning during a free Oct. 6 Zoom webinar, "Truth-Telling in a Time of Turbulence," hosted by the University of Arizona School of Journalism.

The forum is helping the school promote its new Nancy and Bob Maynard Diversity in Journalism Scholarship, which aims to increase diversity in media and bolster the careers of journalists of color while ensuring that news coverage delves into all segments of the nation's communities.

UArizona journalism school alumnus Gilbert Bailon will moderate a panel that includes Mary C. Curtis and Kevin Merida. Bailon is the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and has been honored for his coverage of the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Curtis is a columnist for Roll Call, a Nieman Fellow and a contributor to NBC News, NPR and The Washington Post. Merida is editor-in-chief of The Undefeated, an ESPN news website that covers the intersection of race, sports and culture. He is also the former managing editor of The Washington Post.

The school hopes to raise $25,000 for an endowed scholarship for students interested in advancing the school's capacity to examine issues related to African Americans and/or supporting the success of the school's African American students.

The scholarship honors the late pioneering African American journalists Robert C. Maynard and his wife, Nancy Hicks Maynard, who had close ties to the UArizona School of Journalism through the Editing Program for Minority Journalists, which was held at the university for 20 years.

The Maynards bought The Oakland Tribune two years after Bob Maynard was named editor in 1979, becoming the first African Americans to own a major metropolitan newspaper. In 1977, the couple and seven other journalists co-founded what was then called the Institute for Journalism Education, dedicated to training journalists of color and improving minority representation in news media. Nancy Maynard was one of the first African American female reporters for The New York Times and later served as the Institute for Journalism Education's president. In 1993, Bob Maynard died of cancer at age 56, and in his honor the institute was renamed the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Nancy Maynard died at age 61 in 2008.

Forty-three years after its founding, the Maynard Institute continues to provide professional training for journalists of all backgrounds, in addition to hosting conferences and events focusing on diversity and inclusion in newsrooms and in news coverage.

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Media contact:
Mike Chesnick
School of Journalism
mchesnick1@arizona.edu

The University of Arizona, a land-grant university with two independently accredited medical schools, is one of the nation's top 40 public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report. Established in 1885, the university is widely recognized as a student-centric university and has been designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. The university ranked in the top 20 in 2018 in research expenditures among all public universities, according to the National Science Foundation, and is a leading Research 1 institution with $687 million in annual research expenditures. The university advances the frontiers of interdisciplinary scholarship and entrepreneurial partnerships as a member of the Association of American Universities, the 65 leading public and private research universities in the U.S. It benefits the state with an estimated economic impact of $4.1 billion annually. For the latest on the University of Arizona response to the novel coronavirus, visit the university's COVID-19 webpage.