Author: Holly Nicole Rushakoff

Famously known for his analytical work at the “Big Board”—a large, interactive screen that provides detailed election data at the touch of his fingertips—Steve Kornacki is a national political correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC, and host of the new podcast, The Revolution with Steve Kornacki. He also contributes to NBC Sports’ coverage of the Olympics, Football Night in America, and the Kentucky Derby. Kornacki is the author of The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism.

Steve Kornacki will talk politics and sports in a Q&A with Colleen King, director of the Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media and clinical assistant professor of journalism. Audience questions will be welcomed toward the end of the hour or may be submitted through the Zoom registration form.

This event is presented by the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media.

University of Illinois Media alum Dan Balz (BS ’68, MS ’72, journalism), chief correspondent at The Washington Post, will discuss the U.S. Senate Georgia runoff election between Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael G. Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, with Colleen King, director of the Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media and clinical assistant professor of journalism.

Join us on the eve of this pivotal election race and submit your questions—register here.

Balz covers national politics, the presidency, and Congress for the Washington Post and is a regular panelist on PBS’s Washington Week, as well as a frequent guest on the Sunday morning talk shows and other public affairs programs. He was the inaugural recipient of the College of Media Distinguished Alumni Award in 2021. 

This event is presented by the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media.

Join us for the official launch of the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies, including opening remarks by Chaz Ebert, a video message from filmmaker and Roger Ebert’s friend Martin Scorsese, the inaugural Roger Ebert Lecture, and a film screening.

2022 Roger Ebert Lecture

Re-Enchanting Our Relationship to Film and Media History: A Brief Survey of the Media Ecology Project
From 4-5 p.m., the inaugural Roger Ebert Lecture will be presented by University of Illinois alum Mark Williams (BA ’78, LAS), associate professor of film and media studies at Dartmouth College and director of the Media Ecology Project, followed by a Q&A.
Register to join via Zoom.

At 6:15 p.m., join us for a film screening featuring selections from the Civil Rights Newsfilm collection (1950-1980) and other films in the Media Ecology Project.

About the presenter:

Mark Williams is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College and director of the NEH-supported digital humanities research initiative The Media Ecology Project (MEP), which is developing new digital tools to create a virtuous cycle of interdisciplinary scholarship about archival media that adds value back to participating archives.

He has published widely on film and media history, for example in Feminist Media Histories; Crafts, Trades, and Techniques of Early Cinema [DOMITOR series]; The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and The Digital Humanities; A Companion to the History of American Broadcasting; The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and The Digital Humanities; Télévision: le moment expérimental (1935-1955); Convergence Media History; New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality; Collecting Visible Evidence [Visible Evidence series]; No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality and Ethnicity; Dietrich Icon; Television, History, and American Culture: Feminist Critical Essays; and Living Color: Race, Feminism, and Television. He is a co-editor and contributor to Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm: Cinema, Television, Archive (AFI Series, Routledge, 2018).

At Dartmouth he directed the foundational digital humanities Cyber-Disciplinarity Humanities Institute, founded an e-journal, The Journal of e-Media Studies, co-edited the book series Interfaces: Studies in Visual Culture, and received a Scholarly Innovation and Advancement award and two Neukom grants to build MEP. With John Bell he developed the NEH-funded Semantic Annotation Tool (SAT). They subsequently received two NEH advancement grants to develop SAT for studies of early cinema and civil rights era newsfilm. (See their 2021 essay in Digital Humanities Quarterly for additional details.) A new MEP project is studying the international motion picture legacies of the US Information Agency. With Prof. Ayo Coly he recently received a Dean of the Faculty Award to develop a new interdisciplinary course on “The Idea of Africa.”

Presented by the Roger Ebert Center for Film Studies.

Four of the country’s top political journalists will give a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to cover politics in 2022. The panelists will weigh in on the upcoming midterm elections and potential national outcomes, from the fate of President Joe Biden to the control of Congress, and more. Audience questions will be welcomed toward the end of the hour or may be submitted through the Zoom registration form.

Panelists:

• David Chalian, CNN Political Director
• Domenico Montanaro, NPR Senior Political Editor
• Vivian Salama, Wall Street Journal National Security Reporter 
• Alice Yin, Chicago Tribune City Hall Reporter
• Moderator: Colleen King, Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media Director and Clinical Assistant Professor of Journalism

This event is presented by the Richard and Leslie Frank Center for Leadership and Innovation in Media.

 

About the Panelists

David Chalian

David Chalian is CNN’s Vice President of Political Coverage and Political Director. In his role, Chalian oversees CNN’s daily political coverage across all platforms, the polling and decision desk operations, and helps guide the editorial content for the network’s special event political programming.

Chalian also plays an instrumental role in the network’s daily coverage by providing on-air political analysis across the network’s programs. Prior to arriving at CNN, Chalian served as Vice President for Video Programming at POLITICO where he oversaw all of the video efforts including POLITICO LIVE special events coverage and all new video program and product development. Before that, Chalian served as Washington Bureau Chief for Yahoo! News, Political Editor and on-air political analyst for PBS NewsHour, and ABC News’ Political Director.

While at the PBS NewsHour, Chalian oversaw the political coverage that won the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in television political journalism. He won an Emmy Award as part of the team that produced ABC News’ presidential inauguration coverage in January 2009.

Domenico Montanaro

Domenico Montanaro is NPR’s senior political editor/correspondent. Based in Washington, D.C., his work appears on air and online delivering analysis of the political climate in Washington and campaigns. He also helps edit political coverage. Montanaro joined NPR in 2015 and oversaw coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign, including for broadcast and digital.

Before joining NPR, Montanaro served as political director and senior producer for politics and law at PBS NewsHour. There, he led domestic political and legal coverage, which included the 2014 midterm elections, the Supreme Court, and the unrest in Ferguson, Mo.

Prior to PBS NewsHour, Montanaro was deputy political editor at NBC News, where he covered two presidential elections and reported and edited for the network’s political blog, “First Read.” He has also worked at CBS News, ABC News, The Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, and taught high school English.

Vivian Salama

Vivian Salama covers national security for The Wall Street Journal, based in Washington. She has covered U.S. foreign policy and national security issues for nearly two decades, reporting from more than 75 countries. Most recently, she has reported extensively from Ukraine.

She has previously worked as a national security correspondent for CNN, based in Washington. Since moving to Washington in 2016, Salama has covered the White House and national politics for The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and the Associated Press, with a focus on foreign policy. During that time, she has broken a number of major stories involving the Trump White House, including details on the president’s first White House phone call with the Mexican president, details on the administration’s controversial travel ban, and President Trump’s interest in buying Greenland.

Over the course of her career, she has called Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories and the United Arab Emirates home. Before moving to Washington, Salama was Baghdad bureau chief for the Associated Press, covering the rise and fall of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, as well as Iran’s growing influence across the region. She also covered the refugee and IDP crisis spurred by the violence, visiting camps across the Middle East. The experience inspired Salama to write a children’s book, The Long Journey Home, about an innocent Syrian boy who is forced to flee his home because of the war.

Alice Yin

Alice Yin is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune’s metro desk, responsible for covering the ins and outs of Cook County government and the Obama Presidential Center. She is a Medill School of Journalism graduate and was a statehouse reporter for the Associated Press in Michigan before moving back to Chicago for a stint at the Sun-Times.