Wednesday

September 6, 2006

12:00 p.m.

On the campus Quad
(in case of poor weather, we will meet in Dave Finkelman Auditorium)

Keynote address by
Clarence Page
Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and 1965 Middletown High School graduate

A reception will follow in Levey Hall

CLARENCE PAGE BIO

Miami University Middletown is pleased to welcome back Clarence Page as the keynote speaker for the 2006 Fall Convocation, launching the year-long celebration of the campus' 40 years of service to Middletown and the surrounding area.  Page presented the Alex and Lena Casper Memorial Lecture at Miami Middletown in 1996.

Born in Dayton and graduating from Middletown High School in 1965, he began his journalism career as a freelance writer and photographer for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer at the age of 17.  Following his graduation from Ohio University in 1969, he became a reporter and assistant city editor for the Chicago Tribune, participating in that paper's task force series on vote fraud which won a Pulitzer Prize.

He joined the staff of WBBM-TV in 1980 as Director of the Community Affairs Department, later working for the station as a reporter and planning editor until 1984.  Since 1984 he has been a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board, and in 1989 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.  His column is syndicated nationally by Tribune Media Services in close to 200 papers.  He has been based in Washington, D.C. since May 1991.

Page is regular contributor of essays to "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and "News and Notes with Ed Gordon" on National Public Radio. He has hosted documentaries on PBS and served as a regular panelist on national programs including ABC's "This Week" and BET's weekly "Lead Story" news panel program.

Page's awards include a 1980 Illinois UPI awards for community service for an investigative series titled "The Black Tax" and the Edward Scott Beck Award for overseas reporting of a 1976 series on the changing politics of Southern Africa.  He has received public service awards from the Illinois and Wisconsin chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union for his columns educating readers on constitutional rights, was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame in 1992, and in 2004 received a lifetime achievement award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

His book Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity was published in 1996.  As a freelance writer, he has published articles in Chicago Magazine, the Chicago Reader, Washington Monthly, New Republic, Wall Street Journal, New York Newsday and Emerge.  He holds honorary doctorates from Ohio University, Columbia College in Chicago, Lake Forest College and the Chicago Theological Seminary, among others.

Page is married to the former Lisa Johnson of Chicago. They have one child.