Search
Displaying results 831 - 840 of 2062
Mary Tyler Moore Raises the Curtain on Diabetes
Mary Tyler Moore, who turned the world on with her smile in the popular 1970’s sitcom about a ratings-challenged Minneapolis TV newstation, addressed a Thursday Press Club Luncheon about a more serious, and personal, matter: her decades-long fight with diabetes. Moore, who chronicled her battle in a just-published book, “Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah, Diabetes,” is also international chairwoman for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She has become, she says, “an icon, to help them build awareness about the threat to life that diabetes represents.” She will give Senate…
Type: News
Education Secretary Ties Stimulus Spending to Reform
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used a featured Club speech on May 29 to link the nation’s economic and educational woes to what he called a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity for progress. “We have some real resources, $100 billion, to invest in education,” he said, while emphasizing that money is only part of the plan. “With unprecedented resources, we need unprecedented reform.” Duncan had been CEO of Chicago’s public school system since 2001 before his nomination by President Obama to run the education department. Duncan called for dramatic changes in educational systems at all…
Type: News
Daschle, Leavitt Spar Over Health Care Reform
Two prominent veterans of past health care reform efforts expressed doubt that a comprehensive bill will be approved by Congress this year at a June 2 Newsmaker that filled the Press Club ballroom. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and former Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt discussed--and sometimes sparred over--the prospects for reform in a session moderated by Mark McClellan, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “I think there’s only a 50-50 chance that something is going to pass,” Daschle told an audience of about 175. One key…
Type: News
Portraiture Tips From a Pro
Clay Blackmore laughs about his early days as a photographer. Blackmore, who assisted the portrait photographer Monte Zucker for 25 years before going it alone, imitated the legendary photographer so completely that Zucker had trouble distinguishing between his photographs and those shot by his student. “I used to be so nervous, I would glue photographs to the tripod” and copy them, Blackmore told more than 150 National Press Club members and their guests at a talk “How to Photograph Everyone” on May 27. Blackmore isn’t nervous any more. “When you start to learn the technique, you get…
Type: News
Connelly Explores the News Biz in New Mystery-Thriller, "Scarecrow"
A police officer's story about an "almost perfect crime" was the basis for Michael Connelly's new novel, "Scarecrow," the author told an NPC audience Wednesday. Connelly said he fleshed out the idea after an FBI agent told him how the Internet has become a social network for people with aberrant desires looking for a community of like-minded people to explore their dark sides. After seeing an episode of the TV show, The Wire, about a newspaper story, Connelly said he put all the elements together and came up with the plot for "Scarecrow." He brought back his protagonist from 14 years ago…
Type: News
NPC Members Among Washingtonian's DC Power Players
Vanity Fair national editor Todd Purdum and Chicago Times columnist-bureau chief Lynn Sweet are among Washingtonian magazine's 50 best and most influential DC-based journalists of 2009. The publication's June issue carries thumbnail sketches of the two National Press Club members. The issue is on sale now. Here's what Washingtonian says of Purdum: "President Clinton may have called him 'sleazy,' 'slimy,' and a 'scumbag' after a particularly cutting piece last year, but most others would agree that Purdum writes what everyone is thinking." Washingtonian writes of Sweet: "It would be hard to…
Type: News
NPC Member Andrea McCarren Wins Emmy
Club member Andrea McCarren won a regional Emmy in the news special category for her 2008 story about immigration. McCarren traveled to and reported from El Salvador. She was laid off by WJLA (Channel 7) in January in a cost-cutting move by the station. She is the wife of NPC General Manager Bill McCarren.
Type: News
"Wire" Producer Laments Future of Professional Journalism
Clad button-down blue shirt, no tie, faded black jeans and black-and-white wing-tip shoes, former Baltimore Sun police reporter David Simon — producer of HBO’s The Wire — said professional journalism self destructed. Simon, who has earned awards and fame writing and producing NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street, the Emmy Award-winning HBO mini-series The Corner and The Wire, spoke at an NPC Luncheon Monday. “Don’t let anyone tell you that the Internet crept up on us,” said Simon, who said he is worried about the future of journalism since before he took a buyout in 1995. “We destroyed…
Type: News
Macedonia Calls for Full European Integration of All Balkan Countries
Ivica Bocevski, deputy prime minister for EU affairs of the Republic of Macedonia, argued for the “full inclusion and integration of all B alkan states into the European Union” within the next decade. At a June 11 Newsmaker, Bocevski acknowledged that Greek opposition over the name of the Republic of Macedonia is responsible for vetoing Macedonia’s membership into NATO. But he declined to answer specific questions about the name controversy, referring reporters to the diplomatic team currently negotiating that issue. He acknowledged that the name issue was the “800 pound gorilla in the…
Type: News
Marine Commandant Says Corps Fulfilled its Mission in Iraq
The nation’s top Marine says that next spring the US will “close the door, turn out the lights and end Marine Corps presence in Iraq.” Gen. James Conway, in a wide-ranging assessment of the Corps’ current role in two wars, told a Club Luncheon audience June 11 that “we’re coming out under a victory pennant, we have done essentially what the country asked us to do.” Conway, in his second Club appearance since becoming Marine commandant in 2006, noted that “we didn’t find weapons of mass destruction ... but we did do something there ... we have crushed the al Qaeda in the nation of Iraq.”…
Type: News