JC Barone
"The TV is Dead. Long Live TV. Media Framing & Big Biz"
Thursday, March 27
12pm-1pm

JC has been an active producer, director and educator for over 20 years. He received the Connecticut State University System-wide Teaching Award (2014) and he was awarded a Faculty Fellowship at the Television Academy in Los Angeles (2015). His current documentaries on WWII hero Major Doc Brown and artist, writer, feminist Kate Millett have taken top awards at film festivals in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Woodstock, NY, and the UK. His research interests are in media framing and the presentation of news.

JC’s students have taken the highest honors in their categories at the Festival of Media Arts, Broadcast Education Association, and in the Student Production Awards, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Boston/New England.
 

Jim and Jacky Smith
The First Amendment and Covering Our Communities
Tuesday, April 1
12pm-1pm

Jim and Jacky Smith are inductees of the Connecticut SPJ Hall of Fame. Both are recipients of the Yankee Quill Award, the highest individual award for New England journalists.

Jacky Smith began her journalism career as a 35-cent-an-inch stringer covering a small town in rural Connecticut and built that into an extraordinary career that spanned four decades at six newspapers and two universities. A year ago, Jacky was named ombudsman of Stars and Stripes, the legendary military newspaper, where her primary responsibility is to protect the free flow of news and information. She holds a bachelor’s in journalism from Southern Connecticut State University, and a master’s in writing from Wesleyan University. She taught journalism at the University of Hartford and Southern Connecticut State University. Throughout her career Jacky worked to strengthen the role of a free press by explaining its importance to readers, fighting for it at government levels, and demonstrating how a free press works for the betterment of the community.

Jim Smith started out as a reporter, city editor and sports editor at The Courant before serving as managing editor at the Torrington Register-Citizen, The Day of New London, the News-Times of Danbury. He was executive editor at The Record-Journal of Meriden, editor of the Connecticut Post and executive editor of the New Britain Herald and Bristol Press. Jim has won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award for his columns on the free press.

Jim and Jacky live in Bethel. They are the parents of four daughters and the grandparents of three men, aged 6 to 24.

John Roche
Getting it Right in a Changing Media Landscape
Thursday, April 10
12pm-1pm

John Roche worked full-time as an award-winning journalist for more than 25 years before joining the WCSU Writing Department focusing on journalism. He earned his MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at WCSU in 2012 and now also teaches in our graduate program. He continues to freelance as a journalist for regional magazines and newspapers. 

Brian Stevens
Journalism and Activism at WestConn
Thursday, April 17
12pm-1pm

Archivist and Special Collections Librarian, WestConn Archives (2007- ).  Brian is the founder of a statewide archival database, Connecticut's Archives Online, is one of the state's Traveling Archivist, and a member of the State Historic Records Advisory Board.  Most recently, he is the author of two articles on Connecticut participants in the 1932 Bonus March in Connecticut History Review.