Recent Pollner profs Click on photos to read about their Pollner experiences

John Woestendiek Fall 2007

Henriette Löwisch Fall 2006

Christine Boese Fall 2005

Nancy Szokan Fall 2004

Maurice Possley Fall 2003

Tom Cheatham Fall 2002

Jonathan Weber Spring 2002

The Pollner Professorship was established to honor the memory of Anthony Pollner, a 1999 graduate of the UM School of Journalism. After Anthony died in an accident in May 2001, his friends and family created an endowment that makes the professorship possible.

The Pollner family’s commitment is to invite working journalists with diverse and distinguished backgrounds to share their experiences with the school’s best students in a seminar devoted to a topic of the Pollner professor’s choosing. And because Anthony was most devoted to his work at the Kaimin, the Pollner professor's most important responsibility is to work daily with the Kaimin staff to help those young journalists hone their skills in producing thoughtful and thorough journalism. The Pollner professor also delivers a public lecture on a journalism issue in a presentation that attracts an audience from the campus and the Missoula community.

The four-month professorship pays a stipend of $40,000.

Pollner professors have described their semester at UM as some of the finest and most fulfilling months of their lives. The inaugural professor was Jonathan Weber, a former Los Angeles Times business and technology reporter who became editor of the Industry Standard, a magazine that covered the dot-com boom and bust. At UM, Weber taught a seminar on globalization and the press. His lecture examined the rise and fall of The Industry Standard, the fastest-growing magazine in American history. He is now publisher of newwest.net.

Weber was followed by Tom Cheatham, who spent years as a foreign correspondent for United Press International and then as a producer and foreign bureau chief for NBC. His seminar subject was war correspondence; his lecture topic was the role of the press in wartime

Maurice Possley, a criminal justice investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune whose work has received prestigious national awards, completed his semester as the distinguished Pollner professor in December 2003. In the waning days of his tenure at UM Possley wrote a colleague: “I'm battling little lumps in my throat at various moments...about leaving.” Possley’s lecture examined how DNA evidence exposed flaws in the U.S. justice system.

The 2004 Pollner prof was Nancy Szokan, an editor at the Washington Post, who taught a course in opinion journalism. In her lecture, Szokan warned that traditional forms of news are in decline and that journalists must evolve to meet changing demands.

In 2005, Christine Boese, a blogging pioneer working for CNN, taught a course on web logs (blogs) and the media. Her lecture used blogs from the war in Iraq as a vehicle to explore the relationship between the traditional media and the writers and readers of blogs.

The 2006 Pollner professor was Henriette Löwisch, a German foreign correspondent for Agence France-Presse. She taught a seminar on foreign correspondence and argued in her lecture that by gaining knowledge of the rest of the world, U.S. citizens can fix the global image of the “Ugly American.”

The most recent Pollner prof was John Woestendiek, a Pulitzer Prize winner who now writes for the Baltimore Sun. Woestendiek taught a seminar called "Journalism With Heart" in which students examined the effect of mining on the town of Opportunty, Mont.

Interested journalists should apply electronically by Feb. 11, 2008. Please send a letter of interest, suggested seminar topic, resume, references and clips, if appropriate, to Print Department Chair Carol Van Valkenburg at carol.vanvalkenburg@umontana.edu

For more information, contact Van Valkenburg at 406-243-4008.

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