Source: Gloria Freeland, 785-532-0721, gfreela@k-state.edu

Monday, April 4, 2011

2011 BILL BROWN MASTER EDITOR TO MEET WITH STUDENTS, LECTURE ON KEEPING GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENT AND PUBLIC INFORMED

MANHATTAN -- Tim Carpenter, a Topeka Capital-Journal reporter covering state and federal government and politics, is the 2011 Bill Brown Master Editor at Kansas State University's A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Carpenter will spend Wednesday, April 6, at the school meeting with students and faculty members. He also will present the 2011 Bill Brown Master Editor Lecture, "Dumbing Down the Public: The Danger of Diminished Resources to Cover Government," at 1:30 p.m. in the Big 12 Room of the K-State Student Union. The lecture is free and the public is invited.

Carpenter develops and produces investigative and enterprise reporting projects and has covered the Kansas Legislature since 2005.

From 1988 to 2004, he was a Lawrence Journal-World reporter. While there, he provided intense coverage of education and other beats.

He was a desk reporter, Topeka bureau, for United Press International from 1986 to 1988.

Carpenter received his bachelor's in journalism and mass communications and agricultural communications from K-State in 1986.

He won the 2010 Morris Prize, the Morris Communication newspaper chain's top employee award, based on a body of work over a number of years; the 2009 first-place award in community journalism for a Kansas Board of Healing Arts series; several Victor Murdock awards for enterprise reporting from the Kansas Press Association; and 2007 and 2008 Journalist of the Year awards from the Kansas City Press Club.

The Bill Brown Master Editor program was endowed in 1990 with a gift from Tom Carlin, general manager of Ag Press in Manhattan and a 1972 K-State journalism and mass communications graduate, to honor Brown's service to K-State' s journalism program.

Brown, a 1949 Journalism graduate, served on K-State's journalism and mass communications faculty from 1970 to 1985. Brown was the inaugural recipient of the Master Editor honor in 1991.

Previous Bill Brown Master Editor recipients include Matt Mansfield, San Jose Mercury News, 2002; Jim Bell, Los Angeles Times, 2001; Scott Kraft, Los Angeles Times, 1998; Pat Stith, a Pulitzer Prize winner, The (Raleigh) News & Observer, 1997; Bruce Buchanan, Harris Enterprises, 1996; Bob Shafer, Minneapolis Star Tribune Online, 1995; Phil Meyer, Knight Professor at the University of North Carolina, 1994; Alice Sky, Wichita Eagle, 1993; and Howard Kessinger, Marysville Advocate, 1992. All but Stith and Mansfield are K-State journalism graduates.

The Bill Brown Master Editor program is co-sponsored by K-State Student Publications Inc., a nonprofit corporation that publishes the daily student newspaper, the Kansas State Collegian; the student yearbook, the Royal Purple; and the campus phone book.