Award-winning journalist Farai Chideya will speak on the challenges of reporting race and place when the idea of a “post-racial” America is being shattered by the realities of Ferguson, the U.S./Mexico border, and more. Chideya has spent years doing journalism on the road, reporting from small towns and big cities wracked by racial strife, and also investigating the harder-to-spot evolutions in race, such as digital segregation in social networks. Are America’s media covering race in a consistent way or just running from flashpoint to flashpoint? How do we capture the attention of audiences who may be fatigued or turned off by serious talk about race? And how well are we creating diverse newsrooms today and for the future?

Chideya has worked in print, television, radio, and digital media, as a producer for MTV News, an on-air political analyst for CNN, a reporter and guest host at ABC News, a host at Oxygen Media, and the host of the NPR program “News and Notes.” She is the author of four books: Don’t Believe the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation About African Americans; The Color of Our Future; Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters; and the new book Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology. She hosts and produces the PRI podcast “One with Farai,” is a contributor to New York Public Radio, and appears regularly on cable television programs and radio programs to analyze politics.

Chideya is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence in the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University.

For more information, contact Robert Jensen, rjensen@austin.utexas.edu.

Location: Belo Center for New Media, Presentation Room (BMC 5.102), University of Texas campus