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Conference to Focus on Young Audiences Tuning Out News

PLATTSBURGH, NY __ Where and how are young people getting news? Studies have shown that fewer and fewer younger audiences are reading newspapers or tuning in to television news programming. This issue and others will be explored during a one-day conference on Friday, Sept. 29, hosted by the journalism and communication departments at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh.

The conference, "Tuning In: Bringing Back Young Audiences to News," is part of the ongoing Media Ethics and Law Series at SUNY Plattsburgh, which was developed to provide students, professionals and academicians a forum to discuss issues surrounding the media. This year's conference will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Warren Ballrooms, Angell College Center.

Speakers for the conference will include: David Klatell, the vice dean and professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism; David T. Z. Mindich, associate professor and chair of the Journalism and Mass Communication Department at Saint Michael's College and author of Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News; and Herman Wasserman, a senior lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa, who is currently researching the construction of identity in the news media and the use of the Internet for social activism as part of a Fulbright scholarship.

Registration for the conference, which is open to the public, costs $25 with lunch included. There is no charge for SUNY Plattsburgh students and faculty. Sponsors include the New York Newspaper Association Foundation and Office of the President, Office of Sponsored Research and Programs and College Auxiliary Services at SUNY Plattsburgh.

For more information, contact Kate Chilton with College Auxiliary Services at 518-564-3054.

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David Klatell received his master's degree from Boston University and has been a news writer, producer and executive producer at WCVB-TV (Boston). He has been a senior producer for the White House television pool and department chair and director of Boston University School of Journalism. Klatell's books include Sports for Sale, Television Money and the Fans and Inside Big-Time Sports. He regularly contributes to Washington Post Sunday Magazine and The New York Times. He is the chair of the jury for the Alfred I. duPont- Columbia University Awards in Broadcast Journalism.

Dr. David T. Z. Mindich has worked as an assignment editor for CNN and earned his doctorate in American studies from New York University. Mindich is the author of Just the Facts: How Objectivity Came to Define American Journalism and Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News. In 2002, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) awarded Mindich the Krieghbaum Under-40 Award for Outstanding Achievement in Research, Teaching and Public Service.

Herman Wasserman received his Ph.D. from the University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa. His academic publications include the book Shifting Selves: Postapartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, which he co-edited with Dr. Sean Jacobs. This fall, Wasserman is a Fulbright Scholar at the School of Journalism, Indiana University at Bloomington.
     
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