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Date: January 22, 1999
Former Political Reporter Asks ``Can We Save Our Politics?''
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Paul Taylor, founder and executive director of the Alliance for Better Campaigns, will speak on ``Campaign Reform 2000: Can We Save Our Politics?'' at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Monday, February 8, at 4:30 p.m. in Robertson Hall, Bowl 5.
Taylor spent 25 years as a newspaper reporter, including 14 years at The Washington Post, where he covered national politics and social issues. From 1992 until 1995 he served as the Post's bureau chief in South Africa and reported on its historic transformation from apartheid to democracy. He left the Post in 1996 to form the Free TV for Straight Talk Coalition, then launched the alliance in 1998, with the endorsement of its honorary co-chairs, former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford and former anchorman Walter Cronkite. Its goal is to elevate the level of political campaigns from mud slinging to substantive discussions of issues in an effort to increase participation from now-disinterested voters who have lost respect for the campaign process. It methods include promoting regularly scheduled short debates between politicians as part of nightly news programs during campaign seasons.
Taylor is the author of See How They Run (Knopf, 1990), a book about the 1988 presidential campaign, and co-author of The Old News Versus the New News (Twentieth Century Fund, 1992) about political journalism. He has twice been the visiting Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton, in 1989 and 1995, and has lectured at many colleges.
His lecture is sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.