Slate magazine editor David Plotz will speak at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, in the auditorium of O’Shaughnessy Educational Center on the St. Paul campus of the University of St. Thomas.
The program is the next in Minnesota Public Radio’s 2012-13 Broadcast Journalist Series, which is co-sponsored by St. Thomas' College of Arts and Sciences and its Communication and Journalism Department.
The event is free, but reservations are required. Make them by going to the Minnesota Public Radio website.
Plotz will be interviewed that evening by Eric Ringham, digital Web editor for “The Daily Circuit” on Minnesota Public Radio News. Prior to coming to MPR, Ringham was a commentary editor at the Star Tribune newspaper in Minneapolis.
Plotz joined Slate as a writer when the online magazine was launched in 1996 and has been editor since 2008. Before joining Slate, he was a senior editor and staff writer for the Washington City Paper; he also has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Rolling Stone, GQ, New Republic and The Washington Post.
A 1992 graduate of Harvard University, Plotz won the National Press Club's Hume Award for Political Reporting in 2000, was a National Magazine Award finalist (for a Harper's article about South Carolina's gambling industry) and won an Online Journalism Award for a Slate piece on Enron. He also appears on the weekly Slate Political Gabfest podcast with John Dickerson and Emily Bazelon.
Based in the United States, Slate is a current affairs and culture magazine created by former New Republic editor Michael Kinsley. Since June 2008, Slate has been managed by The Slate Group, an online publishing entity created by The Washington Post Co. to develop and manage Web-only magazines.
Plotz is the author of two books: The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank (2005) and Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible (2009).
Minnesota Public Radio's Broadcast Journalist Series, now in its 17th year, commissions renowned journalists for a 24-hour residency four times a year. They share insights on their craft and issues that affect our world.