Dorothy Butler Gilliam, the first Black woman reporter at The Washington Post and author of a recent memoir, will discuss her career and the importance of newsroom diversity during an online event on Tuesday, Oct. 13.
Gilliam’s talk, which will be live-streamed beginning at 6 p.m., is being sponsored by the Virginia Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Robertson School of Media and Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the BND Institute of Media and Culture.
The event will be live-streamed as a Zoom webinar. The Zoom live-stream will become available on this page at the time of the event.
You will also be able to view the live-stream on the Robertson School’s Facebook page at the time of the event.
Gilliam will be answering your questions during the event. You can submit your questions before the event via this online form. You can also post questions during the event in the Q&A function of the Zoom webinar and on the Facebook live-stream as well as tweet questions during the event with the hashtag #VCURobertson or #SPJVA. We will be asking as many of your questions as possible during the event.
Gilliam started at The Washington Post in 1961 and worked as a reporter, editor, columnist and director of the newspaper’s Young Journalist Development Program during a career that spanned a half-century.
She also has been a television reporter in Washington, D.C., and a senior research scientist at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, where she founded a program encouraging young people to pursue careers in journalism.
A former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, Gilliam published “Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America” in 2019. The memoir details Gilliam’s personal and professional experiences and her efforts to increase the number of journalists of color in U.S. news organizations.
The Oct. 13 online event featuring Gilliam will be moderated by Diane Walker, an anchor at NBC 12 and a member of the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame.
Walker, who has received numerous awards for public service journalism and community involvement, is the face of her station’s flagship franchise “12 On Your Side,” which investigates consumer complaints and gives voice to the voiceless.
The SPJ Virginia Pro Chapter received a grant from the society’s national headquarters to help underwrite the costs of the Oct. 13 program.
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