Provided by Bucks County Community College:
Bucks County Community College’s Newtown Campus
Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Bucks County Community College’s journalism program and its award-winning Centurion student newspaper have invited the public to “Building Journalism Careers in the Digital Age,” the program’s 17th annual Journalism Forum, set for Tuesday, April 19.
The free, two-part event features four professionals working in journalism. The forum will be presented as roundtable discussions in the Centurion newsroom, located in room 127 of the Rollins Center on the Newtown campus.
Session I will be held from 8 to 9:15 a.m. Scheduled to speak are:
- Tom Sofield, editor, publisher, and reporter of LevittownNow.com and a Bucks journalism alumnus
- Marion Callahan, projects and video reporter for the Bucks County Courier Times and Intelligencer
- Matt Flowers, reporter and online digital producer, Courier-Post newspaper and a Bucks journalism alumnus
In Session II, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., Sofield, Callahan, and Flowers will be joined by Freda Savana, staff writer for the Bucks County Courier Times and Intelligencer.
“The speakers will talk about their careers, how they got into journalism, what it takes to get a job in the news business and what their jobs are like on a day-to-day basis,” said journalism professor Tony Rogers. “They will also talk about technological developments in news, such as the increased use of web videos and social media.”
Rogers said since the speakers work in both print and online journalism, and use many tech tools including web video, they will be able to offer a fresh perspective on how the news business works today.
Rogers, a former newspaper editor who has since authored a textbook on newswriting, added that the fact that two of the speakers, Sofield and Flowers, are recent graduates of the journalism program at Bucks shows that there are jobs out there for aspiring journalists.
The Bucks journalism program and the Centurion have co-sponsored the annual forums since 2000. Past speakers have included former NBC News President Steve Capus (a former Bucks journalism student), New York Times reporter Charlie Leduff, Fox News senior producer Jerry Burke, and Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Bill Lyon, Tom Ginsberg, Michael Matza, Natalie Pompilio and Dawn Fallik.
The Journalism Forum is a way to educate the public while showcasing the two-year associate degree journalism program at Bucks County Community College. Admission is free. The campus is located at 275 Swamp Road, Newtown, Pa., 18940. For more information, visit www.bucks.edu/journalism, or contact Prof. Tony Rogers at tony.rogers@bucks.edu or 215-968-8165.
