PenPoints February 2008

February 2008

Journalism in the 21st Century –

How to Adapt to Disruptive Changes in Today’s Media

Join us Saturday, February 16 when Michele Weldon, author of Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page, shares her thoughts with IWPA. Given today’s preferences for narrative storytelling and anecdotal presentations of news across platforms rather than then the previously popular hard-facts approach, journalists need an understanding of these changes and how to deal with them. Ms. Weldon will discuss the cultural and economic factors behind the changes and offer tips on how each of us can be viable and marketable in this new climate.

Michele Weldon

An award-winning journalist for newspapers, magazines, websites and radio for more than 25 years, Ms. Weldon’s third book, Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page, was released in January 2008 from the University of Missouri Press. Ms. Weldon is an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism teaching more than 200 journalism students each year in the fundamental skills courses on writing and reporting.

She has written new and features for scores of major daily newspapers, websites and radio such as the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Dallas Times Herald, New York Times and Minnesota Public Radio. She has also written for major magazines such as Woman’s Day, Parenting, Dial, Seventeen, Writer’s Digest and many others. She writes regularly for Writers’ Digest and West Suburban Living magazines.