Please Note: The session with Cokie and Steve Roberts has a rescheduled date (originally January 15, 2019). The session with April Ryan has a rescheduled date (originally January 29, 2019). All sessions will be held in the Ripley Center.
Nobody seems to have a neutral opinion about journalists, particularly now. They’re looked up to as a “last best hope for the republic” or denounced as “enemies of the people”—or something in between. Decide for yourself when you get some first-hand insights into today’s reporters as some of the best of the best discuss life in the trenches.
FEB 12 Michael Isikoff
One measure of the quality of an investigative reporter is how many toes he’s stepped on and who they belonged to. Suffice it to say Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo news— past national investigative correspondent for NBC News and Newsweek—hasn’t played favorites. At Newsweek, he broke the Monica Lewinsky story. As a co-author, he unearthed important new information on the links between Russia and the election of Donald Trump. In 2009, he was named on a list of the 50 best and most influential journalists in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
His book Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve) is available for sale and signing after the program.
FEB 19 April Ryan (RESCHEDULED)
As the only black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House, April Ryan has staked out a unique vantage point at the intersection of politics and race. Ryan, who has been a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks since the Clinton era and is also a CNN political analyst, is a formidable presence at White House briefings, where she is known as a dogged questioner. She delivers to her radio listeners and the readers of her Fabric of America news blog sharp insights into urban and minority concerns.
Her latest book, Under Fire: Reporting from the Frontlines of the Trump White House (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) is available for sale and signing after the program.
FEB 26 Paul Danahar
Paul Danahar, BBC’s Americas bureau chief, offers an outsider’s perspective on covering Washington. Danahar previously served as the organization’s Middle East bureau chief and ran the news coverage of the Arab Spring, for which he won two Emmys and a Peabody.
MAR 12 Lawrence O'Donnell
Host of "The Last Word" on MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell has seen politics and Washington from all angles. He was a legislative aide to a powerful Democratic senator, a chief of staff of the senate Finance committee, a director of communications for a senatorial election campaign, author, essayist, longtime pundit and executive producer and writer for "The West Wing." From his weeknight perch at MSNBC, O'Donnell draws on all those skills with interviews of the day's newsmakers and a biting essay in which he gets, well, the last word.
His signed book Deadly Force is available for sale after the program.
APR 2 Cokie and Steve Roberts (RESCHEDULED)
If you want to find how Washington really works, you can poll all the newspaper and network reporters on the Hill and the White House, or spend an evening with Steve and Cokie Roberts. These Washington veterans have seen it all. Cokie Roberts, political commentator for ABC News and a senior news analyst for National Public Radio has spent more than 40 years in broadcasting. In 2008 the Library of Congress named her a “Living Legend.” Steve Roberts has been a journalist for almost 50 years, covering some of the major events of his time, from the antiwar movement and student revolts of the 60s and 70s to President Reagan's historic trip to Moscow in 1988 and 12 presidential election campaigns.
Cokie’s book Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868 (Harper) and Steve’s book Every End of This Earth: 13 Families and the New Lives They Made in America (Harper) are available for sale and signing.
5 sessions
Photo caption (upper right): Top to bottom: Cokie Roberts, Steven Roberts, April Ryan, Michael Isikoff, Paul Danahar, and Lawrence O’Donnell
