WHAT: Interview opportunity with 2000 Ruhl Lecturer Sandra Mims Rowe, editor of The

Oregonian and nationally acclaimed as one of the top editors in the nation.

Where: Room 211, Allen Hall, 1020 University St. on the University of Oregon campus

As this year’s Ruhl lecturer, Rowe will discuss "Ethics in the Age of Media Convergence" at
4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 10, in the Adelaide Church Memorial Reading Room at the Knight Library, 1501 Kincaid St. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Rowe says "some of today’s buttoned-down newsrooms lack the passion to bubble and boil" though newsrooms function best as bubbling caldrons of ideas.

"If the race among media is to be the trusted source," she warns, "then we need more discussion, not less, about our standards and ethics; more ideas, not fewer, about how to best serve the public. We must engage the debate for the sake of learning and determined to influence the outcome. And the debate must include how to best apply the highest journalistic standards in the new media landscape."

Rowe has a history with Pulitzer Prizes. For 22 years, she reported for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Va., and was named executive editor and vice president in 1984. Under her leadership, the newspaper won the Pulitzer for general news reporting in 1985.

When she moved to Portland in 1993, Rowe restructured the Oregonian newsroom into teams and increased the local and regional news coverage. Seven years later, the newspaper’s reputation in the local community and journalism circles is excellent. The Oregonian staff captured the Pulitzer for explanatory reporting in 1999. The Oregonian is now rated among the 12 best newspapers in the country according to a recent poll by the Columbia Journalism Review.

A former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Rowe is on the advisory board of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. The missions of both the Poynter Institute and the Ruhl lectures are similar–to promote integrity and ethics in journalism. Rowe also is on the advisory board of the Freedom Forum Pacific Coast Center in San Francisco, a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press and free speech. She chairs the John S. and Janet L. Knight Foundation Journalism Advisory Board.

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