New York Times managing editor to speak at Davis lecture

Gerald Boyd, managing editor of the New York Times, will deliver the annual Michael Davis Lecture at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 in the University Center Ballroom on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University.

The event, part of the university's Black History Month activities, is free and open to the public. The lecture recognizes the contributions of African-Americans in the media and honors the late Michael Davis, a mass communications student at Southeast who died in 1994 as a result of a hazing incident.

Boyd has served as managing editor of the New York Times since September 2001 after having served four years as deputy managing editor for news. During his tenure in that position, the Times' "How Race is Lived in America" series, published in 2000, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Boyd also has worked as a senior editor in the newspaper's Washington bureau and in its national and metropolitan departments. He took the lead during a major expansion of metropolitan reporting.

He graduated in 1973 with a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He joined the New York Times after a 10-year career at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1977, he founded the St. Louis Association of Black Journalists and served as its first president.

For more information, call Dr. Ferrell Ervin, chair of the Department of Communication, at 651-2241. The department sponsors the lecture.