Ottaway Visiting Professor to give talk on April 13

Author and multimedia narrative journalist Alissa Quart, the 2015 James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism, will give a public speech called “Truly Social Media: Social Justice Reporting in the Digital Age” on Monday, April 13, at 7 p.m. in Lecture Center 100.

She will be joined in the last part of her talk by her multimedia collaborator, photographer Alice Proujansky, who will discuss how to make integrated visual and narrative journalism about social justice issues.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing will follow.

Quart is the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books: “Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels;” “Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers” and “Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child.” Her books have been published in 14 languages. She is also the author of a book of poetry, “Monetized,” recently published by Miami University Press.

She is currently co-editor of Economic Hardship Reporting Project with Barbara Ehrenreich, a non-profit devoted to developing and supporting journalism about inequality. Her current multimedia project, “The End of the Middle,” is about America’s struggling middle class and is supported by the Magnum Foundation.

Quart has written for The New York Times Sunday Review, The Atlantic, The Times Magazine, Elle, The Nation, London Review of Books (New York) and many other publications. In addition, she served as a contributing writer/editor at Columbia Journalism Review and Mother Jones, and was formerly a senior editor of the multimedia e-book publisher The Atavist. The transmedia work she co-conceived, wrote and produced for The Atavist, “The Last Clinic,” was nominated for an Emmy and a National Magazine Award in 2014.

Quart previously taught at the Columbia University School of Journalism and was a 2010 Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

Quart joined the SUNY New Paltz faculty in spring 2015 to teach an upper-level journalism seminar called “Narrative Nonfiction in the Digital Age.”

Quart’s collaborator, Alice Proujansky, is a documentary photographer who covers birth, education and working women. Her photographs have been published widely in newspapers and magazines including the New York Times, New York Magazine, Harper’s, the New Republic and the Guardian. She has been working on personal projects about Birth Culture since 2006 and Working Mothers since 2013.

Her work has been supported by the Magnum Foundation, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Solutions Journalism Network and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and was selected for Review Santa Fe 2014.

For information about the event, contact Lisa Phillips, assistant professor of journalism and Ottaway coordinator, at phillipl@newpaltz.edu.

About the James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professorship
The James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professorship, SUNY New Paltz’s only endowed professorship, is named for the founder of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., now the Dow Jones Local Media Group, which operates print and online community media franchises in seven states. The flagship newspaper of the chain is the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y.

Thirteen well-known journalists have preceded Quart as Ottaway professors. Four have been Pulitzer Prize winners, including Renée C. Byer, a photographer for The Sacramento Bee; former New York Times investigative reporter and columnist Sydney Schanberg; Bernard Stein, an editorial writer with The Riverdale Press; and John Darnton, a former Times foreign correspondent.

Other past Ottaway professors were science journalist and author Sonia Shah; NPR Foreign Correspondent Deborah Amos; New York Times investigative reporter Andrew Lehren; award-winning broadcast journalist and media consultant John Larson; Ann Cooper, a former public radio reporter who headed the Committee to Protect Journalists; Byron E. Calame, a longtime Wall Street Journal editor and reporter who has served as The New York Times’ public editor; Roger Kahn, the author of 20 books and one of America’s foremost literary journalists; Trudy Lieberman, one of America’s best consumer reporters; and Martin Gottlieb, the global edition editor of The New York Times.