USC Information Services and the Friends of the USC Libraries will hold a literary luncheon featuring Annenberg School for Communication Associate Dean Joe Saltzman and his book "Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in American Film" on Wednesday, March 27 in Doheny Memorial Library.

USC Journalism professor and author Joe Saltzman will discuss his new book and his new Lear Center project examining the images of journalism in popular culture on March 27. photo by Irene Fertik. Additional Information: -Norman Lear Center Web Site -Annenberg School for Communication Related Stories: -Networker Now on October 25, 2000 Literary Luncheon Contact: -Toni Miller or Susan L Wampler, antoinet@usc.edu,wampler@usc.edu, (213) 740-7684.

Saltzman's book discusses a wide range of the director's representations of journalists -- the iconic news hawks portrayed by Clark Gable and Jean Arthur in It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, and many other, more obscure Capra Fourth Estate creations, including editors, publishers, and even media tycoons.

The Saltzman book is the first publication of the Norman Lear Center Press at the USC Anneberg School for Communication, and it also is the first book to appear under the auspices of a new Lear Center project that Saltzman helms, The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture (IJPC).

The luncheon, co-hosted by USC Chief Information Officer and Dean of the University Libraries Jerry D. Campbell and Senior Associate Dean and Executive Director, Resources and Services Lynn Archer-O'Leary, will take place from noon to 1 p.m. on the second floor of Doheny Memorial Library in the Intellectual Commons. Tickets are $35 and should be reserved in advance. (see contact box).

The luncheon will be followed by a free lecture and book signing from 1-2 p.m. in the Archival Research Center on the same floor.

Joe Saltzman joined CBS television in Los Angeles in 1964 after working for several years as a newspaper reporter and editor. For the next 10 years he produced documentaries, news magazine shows, and daily news shows, winning more than 50 awards, including the Columbia University-duPont broadcast journalism award (the broadcasting equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), four Emmys, four Golden Mikes, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Silver Gavel and one of the first NAACP Image Awards. He was among the first broadcast documentarians to produce, write and report on important social issues.

In 1974, Saltzman created the broadcasting sequence in the USC School of Journalism. During his tenure at USC, Saltzman, who has won three teaching awards, has remained an active journalist producing medical documentaries, functioning as a senior investigative producer for Entertainment Tonight,and writing articles, reviews, columns, and opinion pieces for numerous magazines and newspapers.

He has been researching the image of the journalist in popular culture for 15 years and is considered an expert in the field.

In addition to discussing his book, Saltzman will talk about his emerging IJPC project. The IJPC's goal is to explore all aspects of the image of the journalist in film, television, radio, commercials, cartoons, and fiction through the printed page, CD-ROM, videotapes, audiotapes and a Web site.

Saltzman's book has been praised by Leonard Maltin, who called it "real scholarship and original research presented in a wonderfully readable style. [It] will be consulted for many years to come by film buffs and media scholars alike."

Loren Ghiglione, dean of Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, said the Saltzman study "is indispensable to any student of the American journalist, the mythical as well as the real one."

"Although much has been written about Frank Capra's influence on American society, little of this attention has focused on Capra's treatment of that most foundational and fundamental of American institutions, the Fourth Estate," wrote film historian Richard R. Ness. "Saltzman corrects that oversight with his carefully researched examination... [The] work, particularly his discussion of several lesser-known films by the director, is a significant contribution, not only to Capra scholarship, but to film and journalism studies."