Jessica Birthisel | Sept. 9, 2009
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| Courtesy photo |
| Columnist and author Jeff Zaslow will talk about finding great stories during a lecture Monday night at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. He’s the author of The Last Lecture. |
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“Good story telling never changes,” said Zaslow, author of the best-seller, The Last Lecture, who also writes the “Moving On” column in the Journal. “I’ll be telling the audience about how I found stories and how I’ve chosen to tell them.”
The talk is at 7 p.m. Monday at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, and is free and open to the public.
Zaslow’s column, which focuses on life transitions, led to his attending the last lecture of Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch. The professor had been diagnosed with terminal cancer but wanted to leave his children – and his students – with a message about living life to its fullest. Zaslow and Pausch subsequently teamed up to write The Last Lecture, which became a best-seller around the world and garnered widespread attention.
“I’ve been doing a lot of speaking lately,” said Zaslow in a phone interview Thursday from Iowa, where he was presenting another talk. “I’ve had a busy few years. The Last Lecture has been quite a phenomenon. It’s an honor to share this story with the world.”
Zaslow said that he especially enjoys talking about this book at college campuses.
“Randy was a professor, so students can connect with him,” said Zaslow. “And I love to see that.”
This campus, especially, is important to him. Two of Zaslow’s three children are journalism students here, including journalism major Jordan Zaslow, who will introduce her father Monday night.
“I love IU, I love Bloomington, and the Speaker Series sounds great,” he said. “I’m honored to be a part of it.”
Though he looks forward to talking to an audience of journalists and journalism students, he admitted that he wouldn’t be bringing with him all of the secrets of success for tomorrow’s journalists.
“We don’t know what the future of journalism is,” said Zaslow, who said he’s leaving that path up to today’s journalism students. “I’m 50 years old. The things I know and the directions I took are not how they are going to do it.”
The series continues Oct. 19 with a talk from National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller and wraps up Nov. 10 with a lecture by Fox Sports’ Joe Buck.
Since its inception in 2006, the School of Journalism Speaker Series has brought some of the world’s top journalists and authors to the area, including Steve Kroft, Anna Quindlen, Nina Totenberg, Elizabeth Gilbert, Lisa Ling, Frank DeFord, David Halberstam and Christopher Hitchens.
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