Lecture at Pitt Will Focus on Covering Race Issues in the Media

PITTSBURGH-The coverage of race issues in the media can present special challenges for news reporters and photojournalists. That will be the focus of a lecture presented at the University of Pittsburgh by Mark Roth, senior staff writer at the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette." Roth's talk, "Not All Black and White: The Challenges of Covering Race in the Mass Media," will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. Feb. 17, Pitt's Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP), School of Social Work Conference Center, 2017 Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

The talk, part of the Reed Smith Spring 2009 Speaker Series at CRSP, is free and open to the public. Registration is not required, and lunch will be provided. For more information, call 412-624-7382.

As an editor for the "Post-Gazette," Roth was instrumental in editing projects, one of which won a Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism and another that was a Pulitzer finalist in investigative journalism. He has managed several other award-winning series and was an editor of stories on both of this region's devastating airline crashes-the US Air Flight 427 accident on Sept. 8, 1994, and the terror-related crash of United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. The special section produced on that crash won the Penny Missouri National Award for Special Sections in 2002.

Roth was the newspaper's first full-time science editor, creating the original weekly science section and writing stories for it. He continued as a writer during his years as an editor, and is once again writing full-time, focusing on health and science issues. For the past four years, he has written a monthly series called "The Thinkers," featuring people in the region doing compelling research or work in the community.

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