Povich Center Year in Review

As 2015 is beginning, we’d like to take a quick look back at 2014.

In the past year, the Center has attempted to assist in the growth of students and graduates of the Merrill College of Journalism and enlighten the community in the vital sports issues of the day, as well as spreading the legacy of the work of the late Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich. Our efforts have been both rewarding and daunting as we are aware that the media landscape is ever changing.

We continue to work with students with the hope of instilling the standards and ethics Povich brought to his job at The Washington Post in his 75-year career, regardless of the many forms today’s journalists present their work. Our efforts are helped daily by the backing of the Merrill College faculty and Dean Lucy Dalglish – all of whom continue to demand excellence from our students while helping them and our graduates find a place in today’s media world.

Visiting Professor Kevin Blackistone and adjunct professors David Owens, Chartese Burnett, Mark Gray and Lou Holder, not to mention our guest speakers, continue to instruct, inspire, prod and mentor the growing number of students in the college and throughout the region interested in sports journalism.

In addition to working with students, we’ve been enhanced by engagement from the university community, as well as the entire region, in significant sports-related social topics of interest. The ninth annual Shirley Povich Symposium in November dealt with racism in sports, as panelists Damion Thomas, Kara Lawson, Scott Van Pelt, Kevin Blackistone and Michael Wilbon shared their views to a capacity crowd at the Riggs Alumni Center.

Also, this fall, the Center hosted a panel on the controversial use of the name Redskins by Washington’s National Football League team.  And, in December, the Center teamed with the Newseum to host a panel on women in  sports media at the Newseum in Washington. Christine Brennan, Marcia Keegan, Mary Byrne, Monica McNutt, Lesley Visser, Rachel Nichols and Andrea Kremer comprised a panel of some of the most influential women in sports media. 

The upcoming spring semester should be equally exciting, highlighted by the April 2 Sam Lacy-Wendell Smith award luncheon at the Riggs Alumni Center. This year’s winner will be announced soon.

In February, the Center will host a panel on the changing landscape of college sports, to be followed in March by a visit from sports media critics and our annual participation in the university’s “Maryland Day” on April 25.

The eighth annual Shirley Povich Workshop for high school and college journalism students will be held April 11 in Knight Hall, with more than 150 attendees from across the region expected to attend. As with our first Povich Summer Sports Journalism Camp last July, sportswriters, editors, broadcasters, designers and photographers throughout the area give their time and experience to assist the young journalists. The second summer camp is already on the drawing board with the date to be announced shortly.

We have more than 100 of our students working in internships throughout the school year and summer, as well as freelancing and stringing for a number of news organizations and attending our  “Where the Jobs Are” panel in the spring.

Another point of pride is the research of Merrill College Ph.D candidate Justin Hudson, whose reporting on the coverage of Northwestern University’s football players attempt to unionize was recognized by several academic organizations. Hudson’s work, supervised by Kevin Blackistone, also appeared on the Povich website (povichcenter.org). In addition, Hudson and Blackistone’s proposal on a presentation on the fight between Larry Doby and Art Ditmer was accepted to be part of the 2015 Media & Civil Rights History Symposium.

The website continues to offer a daily roundup of media news, as well as reporting and writing by Merrill College students and features the student-generated “Still No Cheering in the Press Box” e-Book,  now in its second year, with more than a dozen of the nation’s top sportswriters profiled and interviewed and many more to come.