Source: Gloria Freeland, 785-532-0721, gfreela@k-state.edu
Hometown interest for: Wichita
Photo available. Download at http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/aug11/823moore-black.jpg

Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011

COMMUNICATING DIVERSITY: HUCK BOYD LECTURER TO FOCUS ON PRE-COLLEGE OPPORTUNITY PROGRAMS

MANHATTAN -- An honored journalist who now mentors high school students on careers in communications will be the speaker for Kansas State University's 12th annual Huck Boyd Lecture in Community Media.

Wilma Moore-Black, assistant director and curriculum coordinator of the TRIO Communication Upward Bound program at Wichita State University, will present "Promoting Pre-College Programs in Our Communities" at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 20, in the K-State Student Union's Forum Hall.

Moore-Black, a 1973 K-State journalism and mass communications graduate, is an award-winning print and broadcast journalist. She has had stints as bureau manager for United Press International, as consumer reporter and assistant assignments editor at KAKE-TV and as photographer and assistant editor for The Community Voice, Wichita's black weekly newspaper.

As assistant director and curriculum coordinator for the TRIO Communication Upward Bound program, Moore-Black is able to mentor and promote a profession she loves. In this capacity she says she enjoys "unlimited opportunities to grow, learn and be rejuvenated by high school students who have untapped sources to explore lifelong learning and ways to be productive citizens."

Moore-Black is president of Kansas Professional Communicators and former president of Wichita Professional Communicators. She also serves on the Real Men, Real Heroes Inc. board, a nonprofit mentoring organization headquartered in Wichita.

Her lecture is sponsored by the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media in the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at K-State.

McDill "Huck" Boyd was a great believer in preserving the small-town lifestyle and small-town media, and this lecture series in his name highlights the importance of community journalism in Kansas and across the nation, said Gloria Freeland, center director.

"The lectures help illustrate the influence community media have on the health of their communities," Freeland said.

Boyd, a Phillipsburg native, published The Phillips County Review, recruited industry to his community and was active in Republican politics, both in Kansas and nationally.

The center, founded in 1990, has sponsored 11 previous lectures, whose topics have included storytelling in the modern newsroom, community media in the White House, the importance of investigative journalism, the need for diversity in local coverage, why local news will always be critical, and how photos convey the essence of communities.

The center strives to serve and strengthen local newspapers, radio stations, cable systems and other media that play a key role in the survival and revitalization of America's small towns.