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Former editor and API executive Warren Watson,
to facilitate discussion of news in the classroom;
discuss Knight-funded First Amendment awareness study
LOWELL, Mass. -- A veteran New England newspaper editor who was an executive at the American Press Institute and now runs a program at Ball State University will help lead discussions about news in the classroom during an April 7 day-long event at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Warren Watson is director of the J-Ideas High School Institute at Ball State. The goal of the program is to foster and support high-school journalism and First Amendment awareness at all levels nationwide. Watson is among key convenors of "The New(s) England Revolution: From Politics to Courtroom to Classroom."
The Ball State institute develops a range of on-site, tailored and distance-learning training and development programs for press groups and individual schools. J-Ideas has been an active part of the 2005 Future of the First Amendment study, a Knight Foundation project. Along with Dr. Joseph McKinney, Watson helped to develop “The Administrator and the First Amendment,” a for-credit, Teachers’ College course geared toward principals and administrators. The course, EDAD 692, was offered during the fall 2005 term and will be offered in the summer of 2006.
Watson, 55, is a native of New Hampshire, and a 1973 graduate (bachelor’s degree in history) of the University of New Hampshire. Currently a graduate student, he expects to earn a master’s degree in journalism from Ball State in summer 2006.
Watson was the 2003 president of the Society for News Design, a worldwide organization of 2,700 members. He is also an associate at the American Press Institute, a mid-career training institute for journalists based in Reston, Va. Watson, a 26-year veteran of U.S. newspapers, joined API as associate director in June 1998, and became director of extending learning in January 2001. He was promoted to vice president in 2002, and served in that capacity until joining Ball State’s journalism faculty in July 2004. Watson is 2004-05 co-chair of the American Editor Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and serves as co-editor of the ASNE journal.
Watson has held reporting, editing, art and management positions at newspapers as small as the 2,000-circulation Somersworth-Berwicks Free Press and as large as the St. Petersburg Times. He has also worked for the Gloucester (MA) Daily Times, Daily Peabody (MA) Times, Cleveland Press, and Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle. From 1988 to 1998, Watson was a news executive with Guy Gannett Communications of Portland, Maine, first serving as managing editor/ associate publisher of the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, and later as executive editor of Central Maine Newspapers, publishers of the Kennebec Journal and Central Maine Morning Sentinel (1995-98).
Watson writes frequently for industry periodicals, including the American Editor, Presstime, the APME News and Design, SND’s periodical. His recent writings on First Amendment issues have appeared in scholastic journalism and other publications around the country.
At API, Watson conducted more than 70 seminars and workshops both onsite and on the road.
He also served as a consultant with a number of newspapers and newspaper associations. He was a frequent speaker on editorial, design and management topics at API, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, the Society for News Design, the National Press Photographers Association, Associated Press Managing Editors, American Society of Newspaper Editors, America East, Asian American Journalists Association, Newspaper Association of America, the American Copy Editors Society and various New England and other press groups.
At API, he consulted with a number of private clients, including El Universal (of Mexico City), Caulkins Newspapers, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI), Howard Newspapers, Morris Newspapers, Ottaway Newspapers, Freedom Newspapers, Schurz Communications, Pulitzer Newspapers, Greater Niagara Newspapers, Media General Newspapers, Swift Newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group, among others.
In 2004, as an API consultant, Watson helped to install a new performance management system in the newsroom of the Sun of Baltimore, and conducted two-dozen on-site training sessions.
He also developed a unique newspaper evaluation program that has been used by API clients Freedom Newspapers, Swift Newspapers, Southern Newspapers and the Suburban Newspaper Association.
In 2001, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Watson organized and edited the API publication “Crisis Journalism,” a collection of writings, columns, coaching sheets, and articles directed toward newspapers on the handling of major breaking news stories.
Watson has lectured in Spain, France, British Columbia and in the Mideast. In March 1998, he was one of two U.S. speakers at the first-ever conference of Persian Gulf newspapers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He participated in a newspaper readership summit in Dubai in December 2005.
