The newly renamed Journalism and Media Studies department at Linfield College is celebrating the new moniker for its department and major by hosting two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Leslie L. Zaitz on campus.
Zaitz will present “Regaining Trust — Job No. 1 for the Media” Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 12:15 p.m. in 201 Riley Hall. The event is part of celebrations of renaming of the department and the major from “Mass Communication” to “Journalism and Media Studies.”
Zaitz started his professional journalism career in 1973 at the Salem Statesman Journal. He has reported for the Springfield News, the Oregon Journal, UPI and the New York Times. He has worked as a reporter and senior investigative reporter for the Oregonian and spent a year as investigations editor. He was the owner and publisher of the weekly Keizertimes newspaper and is currently the editor and publisher of the weekly Malheur Enterprise newspaper, based in Vale. In 2018, he co-founded Salem Reporter, a digital news service based in Oregon’s capital. Soon after its launch, Salem Reporter formed a collaboration with two other Oregon news organizations to create the Oregon Capital Bureau.
Zaitz has won state, regional and national journalism awards for 40 years. He earned widespread recognition for his coverage of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the Rajneeshpuram community of the 1980s and the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. In 2007, he was part of a team that won the prestigious George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014. He is a five-time winner of Oregon’s Bruce Baer Award, the state’s top award for investigative reporting. The Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association awarded him its highest honor for career achievement in 2016.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Brad Thompson, associate professor of journalism, at 503-883-2291 or bthomps@linfield.edu.
