UM Pollner Professor to Discuss America鈥檚 Attention Crisis and Its Impact on News

Annie Gowen is this fall’s T. Anthony Distinguished Pollner Professor at the 91次元’s School of Journalism. Gowen is speaking at a lecture titled “America’s Attention Crisis and Its Impact on News” at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20.

Annie Gowen is this fall’s T. Anthony Distinguished Pollner Professor at the 91次元’s School of Journalism. Gowen is speaking at a lecture titled “America’s Attention Crisis and Its Impact on News” at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 20.

By UM News Service

MISSOULA – The 91次元 School of Journalism will host its annual T. Anthony Pollner lecture titled , at the Alice Lund Instructional (ALI) Auditorium in the Phyllis J. Washington College of Education.

The speaker is Annie Gowen, this fall’s T. Anthony Distinguished Pollner Professor at the School of Journalism. She will examine how our collective attention decline impacts journalism and give a glimpse into her own quest to limit screen time and what she learned from it. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Gowen is the latest Pollner professor in residence as part of a program created in 2001 to honor the memory of UM alumnus T. Anthony Pollner. Gowen said she spent much of her two decades reporting for the Washington Post “far away from the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., from out-of-the-way places that are often misunderstood.”

Those experiences brought her to India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Myanmar as the paper’s South Asia bureau chief. She is now based in her home state of Kansas as the Post’s Midwest bureau chief, reporting on the impacts of federal policy on the people, land, agriculture and business in the Midwest.

At UM she teaches a seminar titled “Reporting from Rural America,” working with journalism students to craft honest and impactful stories from Montana that explore how people in our smallest communities grapple with big issues like tariffs, water rights, development and tourism.

“It’s crucial for young journalists to know how to report from rural and small towns in regions where residents often have a fear of outsiders and, of course, the mainstream media,” Gowen said.

She also works with students at the Montana Kaimin to bring more nuanced storytelling to the student newspaper.

Gowen joins a long line of distinguished journalists who have served as Pollner professors, many of whom have been honored with a Pulitzer Prize or National Magazine Award for their work. In January Gabrielle Lurie, an award-winning photojournalist from the San Francisco Chronicle, will join the faculty as the spring semester Pollner professor.

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