Roberts talks tough about corporate owners

Gene Roberts did a fantastic job taking a impassioned look and changes in the industry and the unholy devotion to profit margin and staff cutting to artificially keep those profits up in his speech, “The Ethical Dilemma of the Money Changers in the Temple and the News.”

It was tough talk from a man often described as a reporter’s editor. And you can see why he was loved by his staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer, leading the paper to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in his 18 years at the helm.

Roberts also signed copies of his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,” co-authored with Atlanta Journal Constitution Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff.

While on campus, Roberts reconnected with former Philadelphia staff writer Jim Detjen, now the director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism on campus, and a part of the J-School. In the photo taken after the lecture by Darcy Greene, J-School faculty member, Roberts is talking with Detjen and me.

More than 120 students, faculty and members of the public came to here Roberts’ lecture on Wednesday, November 14 for the 7th annual Neal Shine Ethics lecture. Neal’s wife Phyllis was there as well as two of his six children, Judy and Dan and two grandsons. Phyllis also signed copies of the recently released memoir by her late husband. "Life with Mae" is already into its second printing since its release in October.

The next big event on the calendar is the visit of documentary photographer Rania Matar, a photographer who has spent most of her career shooting the painful images of the hardships in the war torn Middle East. Matar will be speaking to journalism classes and will give a public presentation at 7 p.m., Tuesday, November 27 in Studio D in the Com Arts and Sciences Building. Her visit is being sponsored, in part, by the School of Journalism. To get an advanced look at her impressive work, visit http://www.raniamatar.com/.