Axe ’Em, Jacks!
Stephen F. Austin State University's yearlong 85th anniversary celebration will continue at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, with a panel discussion titled "The Changing Face of the Media" in the Baker Pattillo Student Center Theatre.
Panelists will include Texas Monthly magazine editors Skip Hollandsworth, Jake Silverstein and Brian Sweany; Kenny Boles, an Emmy award-winning journalist and news director of KLTV-Tyler and KTRE-TV in Lufkin; SFA alumnus Gary Borders, book author and publisher of The Longview News-Journal; and Kermit Poling, general manager of Red River Radio, an NPR affiliate.
"The popularity of Internet news sources, citizen journalism and the economic crisis are changing the corporate landscape for traditional media sources," said Shirley Luna, associate director of public affairs at SFA. "As consumers of news, it's important to understand why these changes are occurring and how they affect the end product. It is especially important that business people are aware of these changes, so they may better target their audiences and make the best use of their advertising dollars."
A forum for communication majors will begin at 2:30 p.m. in the Student Center President's Suite B. The forum will be a mentoring session that allows students to ask the panelists questions of their own.
Boles, an Emmy award-winning journalist, serves as news director of both KLTV in Tyler and KTRE-TV in Lufkin. The Lufkin native began his career at KTRE when he was 17 and two years later joined the news staff of KPRC-TV in Houston, where he worked his way through the ranks as photographer, producer, reporter and weekend news anchor. Boles attended Houston Baptist University and the University of Texas at Austin.
As a field producer for ABC News, Boles covered wars in the Middle East and Central America as well as the 1984 presidential campaign. In 1990, he became managing editor of KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, where he organized and oversaw the NBC station's coverage of the Northridge earthquake, the Rodney King beating and the city-wide riots that followed, as well as the Michael Jackson child molestation investigation and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. In 1995, Boles returned to East Texas to reorganize and manage the newsroom at KLTV in Tyler.
During the course of his 36-year career, Boles has been honored with a number of regional and national awards for his work in television news. He serves on the Texas Legislative Review Committee for the Texas Association of Broadcasters and on the advisory board for the Department of Communications at the University of Texas at Tyler.
Borders has been publisher of The Longview News-Journal since January 2008. He previously served as publisher of the Lufkin Daily News for five years and was editor and publisher of The Daily Sentinel in Nacogdoches from 1993 to 2003. All three publications are owned by Cox Newspapers. Borders started his career with Cox in Lufkin in 1989 as editorial page editor.
Borders is a lifelong newspaperman who has worked as a paperboy, photographer, writer, editor and publisher. His weekly column is distributed by the New York Times News Service to newspapers across the country.
A collection of his columns, "Behind and Beyond the Pine Curtain," was published by Eakin Press of Austin in 2005. "A Hanging In Nacogdoches," his account of a century-old hanging in Nacogdoches, was published in March 2006.
Borders has a bachelor's degree in history, English and philosophy from Stephen F. Austin State University and a master's in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves on the advisory board of Red River Radio, an NPR affiliate. He currently serves as board chairman and is past president of the Texas Daily Newspaper Association.
Hollandsworth was raised in Wichita Falls, Texas, and graduated with a B.A. in English from Texas Christian University. He has worked as a reporter and columnist for newspapers in Dallas, and he also has worked as a television producer and documentary filmmaker.
Since joining Texas Monthly in 1989, Hollandsworth has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliners Award, the national John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the City and Regional Magazine gold award for feature writing, the Texas Institute of Letters O. Henry award for magazine writing, and the Charles Green award for outstanding magazine writing in Texas, given by the Headliners club of Austin. He has been a finalist four times for the National Magazine Awards, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and his work has been included in such publications as Best American Crime Writing and Best American Magazine Writing.
Poling became interested in broadcasting at a young age and, while in college, co-produced a seven-part television series for WUAB-TV in Cleveland, Ohio. From that inspiration has grown a highly successful dual career in both broadcasting and as a musician, conductor and composer with performances in many of the world's leading concert halls.
Poling has produced audio programs for NPR in Washington, D.C., and since 2006 has served as general manager of Red River Radio, the public radio network serving most of Louisiana, East Texas and South Arkansas. Through the years, his collaborations with artists have included Itzhak Perlman, Eugene Fodor, Victor Borge, Marvin Hamlisch, the Temptations, Emmy Lou Harris and many others.
As an administrator, Poling has served as music director for the Shreveport Symphony, the South Arkansas Symphony, the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and other organizations. May 13, 2006, was recognized as Kermit Poling Day in the City of Shreveport because of Poling's contributions to the community's cultural life, both as an artist and as the voice of the community on Red River Radio.
Since becoming general manager of Red River Radio, the network has become the first digital broadcaster in each of the regions it serves, and he has expanded the use of the digital service to provide three audio streams of programming, including a 24-hour classical stream on HD2 and 24 hours of news/talk on HD3.
Silverstein received a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University, an M.A. in English from Hollins University in Virginia and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. After college, he was an intern at Harper's Magazine and worked his way up to contributing editor. He was a reporter at the Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa from 1999 to 2000 and a 2002 Fulbright Scholar in Zacatecas, Mexico. His Harper's essay, "Highway Run," about a Mexican road race, won the 2007 PEN/USA Journalism Award.
Silverstein's journalism has been featured in several anthologies, including the Best American Travel Writing 2002, and Submersion Journalism, a 2008 collection of first-person non-fiction. He came to work for Texas Monthly in 2006 as a senior editor. In September 2008 he was named editor of Texas Monthly.
Sweany began his Texas Monthly career as an intern in the publisher's office in January 1996 and was hired as a copy editor in the editorial department nine months later. Born and raised outside of Dallas, Sweany earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of North Texas in Denton and a master's degree in English literature from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He also has served as an assistant professor in the journalism department at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York.
Dr. Brian Murphy, dean of SFA's College of Liberal and Applied Arts, will moderate the event.
For more information about the event, call (936) 468-2605.