SoJ Web Report | Jan. 29, 2012
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- David Margolick, author of Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, a study of the principal figures in the late IU professor Will Counts’ iconic photograph from the 1957 Arkansas school desegregation crisis, will speak at 7 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Whittenberger Auditorium, Indiana Memorial Union.
- Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth, great-granddaughter of Eugene Meyer who bought the newspaper in 1933, will speak at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at the Ernie Pyle Hall auditorium, Room 220.
About David Margolick:
7 p.m. Feb. 20
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The photo by Will Counts, later a photojournalism professor at the IU School of Journalism, is famous for its depiction of two teens – one black, one white — on the day of a court-ordered mandate to admit black students to Central High School.
Margolick says in a video on his website that his inspiration for the book was a visit to the visitors’ center at the school, where the Counts photo is exhibited near a late 1990s-era photo of the two women. He wanted to know how they moved from their lives in that moment in 1957 to the congenial, smiling women in the more recent photo. After interviewing and getting to know Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery, Margolick says he saw those women as a metaphor for the country’s racial history.
“I want this book to be an honest acknowledgement of the racial sensitivities that persist in this country and how, when it comes to race relations in America, everything is very complex and there are no simple or happy endings,” he says in the video.
A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Margolick also was legal affairs reporter at The New York Times, where he covered the trials of O.J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt and William Kennedy Smith. His work for the Times was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize four times. His other books include Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink, and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song.
About Katharine Weymouth:
6:30 p.m. Feb. 28
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Weymouth is the great-granddaughter of Eugene Meyer, who bought the Post in 1933, and granddaughter and namesake of Katharine Graham, who led the company for 30 years and oversaw the Post reporters’ uncovering of the Watergate scandal.
Weymouth joined the Post in 1996 as assistant counsel and moved to an online publishing subsidiary of The Washington Post Company as associate counsel. She became director of the advertising department’s jobs unit in 2002 and was named director of advertising sales in April 2004.
She earned a bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1988 and a law degree from Stanford Law School in 1992. Following law school, she clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for one year. She practiced law at Williams & Connolly in Washington, D.C., from 1993-1996.
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The IU School of Journalism Speaker Series gives students and area residents the opportunity to meet with some of the top media professionals in the country. All events are free and open to the public.
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