PORT ANGELES — Peninsula College will host a First Amendment Festival — with a presentation, panel discussion and film — on Tuesday and Wednesday.
At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, staff members of The Buccaneer student newspaper will present “New York, New York and a First Amendment State of Mind” in the Little Theater at the college’s Port Angeles campus at 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
While attending the College Media Advisers national conference March 13-15, the students interviewed Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, filmmaker and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Judith Ehrlich, co-director of “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” and members of the Westbrook Church, who won a controversial free speech case in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The students — managing editor Josh Holloway, news editor Jameson Hawn of Port Townsend, special sections editor Nate Julander of California, photo editor Jesse Major of Port Angeles, online editor Kassandra Grimm of Grand Mound and reporters Viola Ware and Tristian Twitchell — will be accompanied by Buccaneer business manager Boneita Smith and adviser Rich Riski.
The student presentation will be followed at 2 p.m. by a free screening in the Little Theater of the Oscar-nominated documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers.”
Panel discussion
On Wednesday, “Publish or Perish — The State of the Media on the Olympic Peninsula” will be presented at 1:45 p.m. in the Little Theater.
News executives on the North Olympic Peninsula will join Frank Garred, government open-access expert and Peninsula College instructor, in an open roundtable discussion. The event is free and open to the public.
Scheduled speakers include Rex Wilson, executive editor of the Peninsula Daily News; Todd Ortloff, program manager of KONP Radio; Brown Maloney, owner of the weekly Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum; and Fred Obee, general manager for the weekly Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader.
Garred, the former editor and publisher of The Leader, the Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum, was the was the interim founding executive director of the Washington Coalition for Open Government and serves on the Washington State Public Records Exemptions Accountability Committee as the governor’s appointee.
Over the past six years, he has been a journalism instructor at Western Washington University and Peninsula College.
Riski will serve as moderator.
The Washington Community College Journalism Association has announced that student reporters Ryan Hueter of Sequim, Jameson Hawn and Kassandra Grimm won awards for their work on The Buccaneer.
The awards will be formally announced at a May 21 banquet at Edmonds Community College.
