Seymour Hersh to speak on investigative journalism panel—National Press Club, November 6

In what will be an especially timely panel at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, long-time investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh will talk about how he has thrived during a career spent mostly as an independent journalist.

Thousands of journalists have been laid off in the past two years and investigative reporters are seeking new ways to continue to their work.  Some investigative editors and reporters are free-lancing, forming non-profit investigative groups, or becoming professors and working with students.

Hersh will offer his insights into how to do investigative work without a full-time job in a traditional newsroom and will review 40-plus years of freelance and contractual work during the afternoon panel on Friday (Nov. 6).

The session will run from 4-5:30 p.m., and Hersh will field questions from co-panelists Brant  Houston, the Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting in the College of Media at the University of Illinois, and Mark Feldstein, journalism professor at George Washington University and biographer of investigative journalist Jack Anderson.

Seating is limited and a spot can be reserved at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/5647573.

“Hersh’s work has been an inspiration for more than 40 years,” said Houston, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. “How he has managed to get his scoops and publish his groundbreaking stories—and pay the bills at the same time—will be of great interest to journalists.”

Hersh will also be asked to talk about his reporting methods and dealing with the controversy his stories and remarks stir—and to share his thoughts on how journalism will reshape itself in the coming years.

Hersh’s work has spanned five decades, ranging from disclosures of the development of chemical and biological weapons in the 1960s to uncovering torture of detainees by military police at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He has written books on President John F. Kennedy Jr., diplomat Henry Kissinger, the Iraq War, the shooting down of a Korean airliner, and the illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans. He currently publishes his stories in The New Yorker magazine.

The panel is sponsored by the Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The fund provided financial support for Hersh when he was working on his 1969 exposé of the massacre of civilians by U.S. soldiers in My Lai during the Vietnam War, for which Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize.

The panel is in conjunction with an awards dinner on Saturday (Nov. 7), at the National Press Club, where Hersh will be  presented with the Illinois Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism by the College of Media at the University of Illinois.