October 10 at 5 pm in-person at Beaupre Room 105 and streaming live on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Youtube.
As we face a fateful election, there is no map, no guidebook for navigating our Information landscape. Journalists, public leaders, citizens themselves face an unprecedented challenge in deciding what to believe and who to trust. What will it take to build an information environment that best serves the interest of individuals and society?
Nancy Gibbs is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice and Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Until 2018, she was Editor in Chief of TIME, directing news and feature coverage for more than 65 million readers across all U.S., European and Asian editions. Gibbs was named TIME’s 17th editor in September 2013, the first woman to hold the position, and remains an Editor at Large. Leading TIME through a period of media upheaval, she built the largest audience in its history, accelerating its transformation into a global, 24/7 digital news operation. She launched a documentary division, Red Border Films, as well as new products in photography, e-commerce and live events. TIME built more than 50 million followers across social channels, and won a primetime Emmy award for its two-part “A Year in Space” documentary, produced with PBS. In her final year at Time Inc., Gibbs also served as Editorial Director of the Time Inc. News Group, overseeing multiplatform content for TIME, Money and Fortune.
During her three decades at TIME, she covered four presidential campaigns and is author of more cover stories than any writer in TIME’s near-100 year history, including the black-bordered September 11 special issue, which won the National Magazine Award in 2002. Politico called her “The Poet Laureate of Presidents;” the Chicago Tribune named her one of the Top Ten Magazine writers in the country. She has interviewed five U.S. presidents; numerous US political leaders including Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and John McCain, as well as Michelle Obama and Ivanka Trump; world leaders such as Shinzo Abe, Narendra Modi, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres; and business leaders like Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg, Sundar Pichai and Bill Gates.
She is the co-author, with Michael Duffy, of two best-selling presidential histories: The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (2012), which spent 30 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (2007). Her columns have appeared in the Washington Post as well as TIME, and she has appeared on news shows including Meet the Press, CBS This Morning, PBS Newshour, Morning Joe, World News Tonight, This Week and the Today Show. Gibbs also served as a consultant to CBS News and an essayist for the NewsHour on PBS.
Photo: John Nowak, © 2018 Cable News Networks, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. Used with permission.
The Christiane Amanpour Lecture is endowed by and named for the 1983 URI alumna and 1995 honorary degree recipient. She is chief international anchor for CNN and host of its award-winning, flagship global affairs program Amanpour, as well as Amanpour & Co. which airs on PBS in the United States. Launched in 2008, the speaker series brings well-respected journalists to campus each year.