Buffalo News Editor Mike Connelly will deliver the keynote address as the SUNY Fredonia student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists presents its annual conference on Saturday, April 5.
The conference will run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with Connelly delivering his address at 1:30 p.m. Other speakers scheduled to appear include Buffalo Spree Editor Elizabeth Licata, WGRZ-TV reporter Danny Spewak, WIVB-TV reporter Ed Drantch, social media expert Ben Kirst of Quinlan & Co., WEDG-FM radio satirist/DJ Tom Ragan and Dan Scharfenberger, nightside senior producer of Time Warner Cable News in Syracuse.
The event is free and open to the public. Early speakers will be featured in Fenton Hall rooms 175 and 180. The keynote will take place in Thompson Hall Room 101.
Connelly, who joined The News in 2012, is the former executive editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. His staff in Sarasota won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for investigative reporting on Florida's property insurance industry. Connelly began his career as a copy editor for the national news desk of the Wall Street Journal. He also has worked for Congressional Quarterly Inc., the Baltimore Sun and the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press. Connelly will address the challenges facing The News in the current media environment, and how the paper is dealing with them.
