UNH Announces New Visiting Journalist Program
Oct. 28 lecture features medical writer for the Wall Street Journal

Contact: Erika Mantz
603-862-1567
UNH Media Relations

Oct. 14, 2004



DURHAM, N.H. – The newly established Donald Murray Visiting Journalist Program at the University of New Hampshire will host its first visiting journalist the week of Oct. 25, 2004. As part of his week-long residency on campus, Ron Winslow, senior medical writer for the Wall Street Journal and a 1971 graduate of UNH’s journalism program, will give a public talk at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28, in the Memorial Union Building, Theater II. His lecture, The Bleeding Edge: A Journalist’s Perspective on the Health Care Wars, is free and open to the public.

Ron Winslow

A reporter with the Wall Street Journal since 1983, Winslow has written more than 1,000 articles describing new medical and health care research and chronicling the forces of economics and innovation that are transforming the U.S. health care system. He is also deputy editor of the paper’s health and science coverage. Winslow has received awards for his work from the American Heart Association, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and other groups.

A recent gift from The McLean Contributionship on behalf of The Telegraph of Nashua established an endowment for The Donald Murray Visiting Journalist Program. The program will bring accomplished alumni journalists back to campus for week-long residencies to work with students and faculty, give guest lectures in journalism classes and consult with staff of the student newspaper, The New Hampshire. It is named in honor of Donald Murray, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who started the UNH journalism program in 1963. A columnist for the Boston Globe, Murray has written numerous books on writing and teaching writing, as well as poetry, novels and memoirs.

Terry Williams, a 1980 graduate of UNH’s journalism program and publisher of The Telegraph, was instrumental in helping to establish the visiting journalist program so students could benefit from the expertise of the hundreds of alumni who have graduated from the journalism program over the last 40 years. Williams took his first journalism course from Winslow, who taught at UNH from 1978-1983, and credits Winslow with sparking his interest in journalism.