Condé Nast Lectures on Media, Ethics and Values

E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Washington Post syndicated columnist

“Can the Old Media and the New Media Make Peace
and Strengthen Democracy?”

Monday, April 7, 2008, 7:30 PM
Rehm Library

The new media forms, such as opinionated bloggers, talk radio and cable news shows, are answering a great need that traditional journalism was not answering. While they do not exist to inform, they play the vital roles of engaging citizens in the obligations of politics and providing a forum for voters’ voices to be heard. Yet it is essential to preserve the financial base that supports independent journalism and the work of journalists who, often at great risk, keep free citizens informed. E.J. Dionne, nationally syndicated columnist, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and professor at Georgetown University, will address the changing nature of the media and how both traditional and new media forms play a critical role in our democracy.

Dionne's Washington Post column appears in more than 90 newspapers in the United States and abroad. His newest book, just published, is Souled Out:
Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right (Princeton: 2008).

His best-selling book, “Why Americans Hate Politics” (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1991. The book, which Newsday called “a classic in American political history,” anticipated all the major themes of the 1992 campaign. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a National Book Award nominee.

Dionne also spent 14 years with The New York Times, reporting on state and local government, national politics, and from around the world, including stints in Paris, Rome and Beirut. The Los Angeles Times praised his coverage of the Vatican as the best in two decades.

Dionne has been a frequent commentator on politics for National Public Radio, CNN and NBC’s “Meet the Press.” His second book, “They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate The Next Political Era” (Simon & Schuster), was published in February 1996. The New York Times Book Review called it “a luminously intelligent and quietly passionate polemic that deserves to alter the terms of American political debate.”

In 1998, Dionne edited “Community Works: The Revival of Civil Society in America” (Brookings Institution Press) and has co-edited “What’s God Got To Do With the American Experiment?” (Brookings Institution Press, 2000) with John J. DiIulio Jr. His third book, “Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge” (Simon & Schuster) was published May 2004.

In 1996, in selecting Dionne as recipient of its annual Carey McWilliams Award to honor a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics, the American Political Science Association said: “We honor Mr. Dionne as one of Washington’s finest journalistic thinkers and for his insightful daily contributions to the political discourse of our nation. ... His tireless efforts uplift the public ... in a time that cries for reasoned debate, not more negative ads, rumor or simplistic sound bites.” In 1997, he was named among the 25 most influential Washington journalists by the National Journal and among the capital city’s top 50 journalists by the Washingtonian magazine.

Dionne grew up in Fall River, Mass. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from Harvard University in 1973 and received his doctorate from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. In 1994-95, he was a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. In May 1996, Dionne joined The Brookings Institution as a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program, then known as Governmental Studies. He began teaching at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute as University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture in the fall of 2003. (source: http://www.postwritersgroup.com/dionne.htm)

Dionne's most recent articles can be accessed by clicking here.