Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Thursday: British Journalist and Educator Ros Coward.

BRITISH JOURNALIST AND EDUCATOR Ros Coward will visit the class on Thursday and discuss media coverage of the British Royal Family, a very timely subject given the pending wedding of Kate Middleton to Prince William, the future king of England.

Coward has worked in television, reported for newspapers, written for magazines and she has authored several non-fiction books, including Diana, The Authorized Portrait.

Her specialties include coverage of the royals, confessional journalism, environmental issues and the state of modern feminism.

She documented her efforts caring for her mother, who suffered from dementia. She wrote an academic article about the rising popularity of autobiographical journalism. And she serves on the board of directors for Greenpeace UK.

She is a faculty member at Roehampton University but she is currently a visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania this semester.

She'll lecture about coverage of the royals and then we'll open the floor for questions. Think about what information you can draw from her:

• How is the British media different from the American media?
Are the royals newsworthy?
• Is the constant presence of the journalist in news stories good, or is it a distraction from the actual news?
• Can a journalist also be an activist?

Click on the links throughout this post. Learn about her. Come ready to ask questions.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Offner said...

I really enjoyed Ros Coward's lecture today. Although she did mainly discuss the royals, she did a good job of connecting the royal family's hype with the media, and in answering many of our questions. From a British reporter's perspective, it was interesting to learn how different the American media is to the British media. British television presents news in straightforward, factual way. She touched upon how we would never see Fox's use of opinion or an "Anderson Cooper"-like figure on British television reporting news. Yet, while our newspapers attempt to stay more news-based than feature, British papers are heavy in editorials. She really made it seem like they are spectrums apart. I'm interested in seeing whether or not our papers will move towards that as well.

Her Name Is Sam Kelly said...

Hope it was a great lecture! :)