Victor Navasky, publisher emeritus for The Nation, and the George Delacorte Professor of Magazine Journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Monday, Feb. 13 to discuss "Distinguishing Truth from Objectivity: The Case for the Partisan Press." The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m. Seating is free, on a first-come basis.
Navasky, editor of The Nation since 1978, became its publisher and editorial director in 2005. His lecture is the second in a series of Athenaeum discussions this semester on bias and objectivity in the news media. During his address, Navasky will consider the answers to such questions as Can you trust a news medium that is explicitly partisan? Can a news source with a point of view be balanced and fair?
Prior to joining The Nation, he served as an editor at The New York Times Magazine and wrote a monthly column (In Cold Print) about the publishing business for the Times Book Review. Of the difference between working for The Times and The Nation, Navasky has said that although The New York Times has a large readership, The Nation was consideredby those distrustful of television and the national pressto be part of their "lifeline" and "identity."
Navasky is the author of Kennedy Justice (Atheneum, 1977), an analysis of Robert Kennedy as attorney general, and Naming Names (Viking, 1980), winner of the National Book Award for its look at the Hollywood blacklist period. He also is the coauthor of The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (Villard Books, 1998), and was the founding editor and publisher of Monocle, a "leisurely quarterly of political satire and social criticism" that appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
His latest book, A Matter of Opinion, was released in 2005 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and is described by Booklist as "part memoir and part commentary on the state of opinion journals and American politics."
In his current role in higher education, Navasky serves as director of Columbia University's Delacorte Center of Magazines and is chair of the Columbia Journalism Review.
For more information about this event: http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/mmca/temp_fn.asp?volumeFN=21&issueFN=06&typeFN=f