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Last modified: Monday, January 30, 2012

IU journalism speaker series features author David Margolick, Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 30, 2012

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- David Margolick, whose new book focuses on two people featured in an Indiana University photojournalism professor's historic photograph taken during the Arkansas desegregation crisis, will kick off the School of Journalism's spring speaker series at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20.

David Margolick

David Margolick

Katharine Weymouth, CEO of Washington Post Media and publisher of The Washington Post, also will speak in the series, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 28.

Margolick's presentation will take place in Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St., on the IU Bloomington campus. Weymouth will speak in room 220 in Ernie Pyle Hall, 940 E. Seventh St. Both events are free and open to the public.

About David Margolick:

Margolick's book, "Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock" (Yale University Press, 2011), is about the lives of Hazel Bryan Massery, the white student seen in the iconic photo jeering at Elizabeth Eckford, a black student entering Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., on the day of a court-ordered mandate to desegregate the school. IU journalism professor Will Counts, who died in 2001, took the Pulitzer Prize-nominated picture when he was a photographer for the Arkansas Democrat.

A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Margolick has said that his inspiration for the book was a trip to the visitors' center at the school, where Counts' photo is exhibited near a late 1990s-era photo of the two women, also taken by him. The 1957 image was named by The Associated Press as one of the top 100 photographs of the 20th century.

Margolick 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 Eckford and Massery, Margolick said he saw those women as a metaphor for the country's racial history.

Margolick also has been a 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:

Katharine Weymouth

Katharine Weymouth

Print-Quality Photo

Weymouth was named CEO of Washington Post Media and publisher of The Washington Post in 2008. She had been vice president of advertising for The Washington Post since January 2005.

She 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 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI), then the online publishing subsidiary of The Washington Post Co., as associate counsel. In 2000, Weymouth returned to the newspaper, where she served as the advertising department's liaison between the Post and WPNI. 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 to 1996.

The School of Journalism Speaker Series gives students and area residents the opportunity to meet with some of the top media professionals in the country. Recent speakers have include Lara Logan, Gay Talese and Thomas Friedman. For more on the School of Journalism Speaker Series and to read about more than 20 other top journalists who have been guests of the program, visit the school's website.