MEDIA RELEASES

Dominican University continues its exploration of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms with a lecture by media expert Dr. Peter K. Fallon titled “ Ego-Journalism: From Hemingway to the Blogosphere.” The lecture, part of the community-wide Big Read program, will be held on Monday, November 5 at 7:00 p.m. in Bluhm Lecture Hall, Parmer Hall, 7900 W. Division Street, River Forest.

Fallon, adjunct professor at Dominican University, will examine how Hemingway’s “ my-point-of-view” reporting, referred to as “ego journalism,” formed the basis of the “new journalism” of the 1960s, made famous by writers such as Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. Today, the mainstream media is forced by social and political pressures to don a mask of objectivity. But readers wanting varying interpretations of information and the meaning behind stories can look to a new kind of personal journalism available in alternative media such as blogs. The Internet now provides everyone with the opportunity to post ideas to a sizable readership, impossible under the old media model.

A 22-year veteran of the television industry, including a 17-year stint with NBC News in New York, Fallon is an associate professor of journalism at Roosevelt University. He holds a doctoral degree in media ecology from New York University and is the author of the Marshall McLuhan Award-winning book Printing, Literacy and Education in Eighteenth Century Ireland: Why the Irish Speak English.

Dominican University is a co-sponsor of the Oak Park/River Forest/Forest Park Big Read, a program launched by the National Endowment for the Arts to bring communities together to discuss one book. A final lecture in the series, “Hello to Propaganda,” by Dr. John Jenks, assistant professor of communications at Dominican University, will conclude the series on November 13 at 7:00 p.m. in Parmer Hall.

Founded in 1901, Dominican University is a comprehensive, coeducational Catholic institution offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In the 2008 issue of America’s Best Colleges, U.S. News & World Report again ranked Dominican University in the top tier of Midwest master’s level universities and as a “best value” for the tenth consecutive year.