Paul Taylor Discusses "Monicanomics of Political Coverage" Wednesday, Feb. 17

SALISBURY, MD--Paul Taylor, founder and director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns, a public interest group dedicated to improving the conduct and discourse of politics, especially on television, opens a spring lecture series at Salisbury State University on "The Media and American Society."

Taylorâs presentation, "Monicanomics of Political Coverage," is on Wednesday, February 17, at 7 p.m. in the Wicomico Room in the Guerrieri University Center. Admission is free and the public is invited.

The Alliance for Better Campaigns was launched in January 1998 with grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Its honorary co-chairmen are Walter Cronkite and former Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Taylor was a newspaper reporter for 25 years, the last 14 at The Washington Post, where he covered national politics and social issues. From 1992-1995, he served as the Postâs bureau chief in South Africa and reported on the historic transformation from apartheid to democracy.

He left the Post in January 1996 to found the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, a public interest group also supported by a Pew Grant.

He is the author of See How They Run (Knopf, 1990), a book about the 1988 presidential campaign, and co-author of The Old News Versus the New News (Twentieth Century Fund, 1992) about political journalism.

He twice served as the visiting Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University in 1989 and 1995. He has lectured at numerous colleges.

Prior to joining the Post he was a reporter at The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem, NC (1970-73) and The Philadelphia Inquirer (1973-1981).

He graduated in 1970 with a B.A. in American studies from Yale University, where he served as executive editor of the Yale Daily News. He attended public schools in Washington, D.C.

His lecture is sponsored by the SSU Faculty Cultural Events Committee. For a complete listing of cultural events at SSU this spring, please call the Salisbury State Public Relations Office at 410-543-6030.