Bloom Gives Morgan Lecture

Stephen G. Bloom, a professor and critically acclaimed journalist, will present the inaugural Joe W. Morgan Memorial Lecture, "Community Reporting and The Oxford Project," at 7:30 p.m., Monday, November 3, in the Round Room, Ford Center for the Fine Arts, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Bloom will discuss the book he co-authored, "The Oxford Project," which documents two decades of change in the lives of residents of Oxford, Iowa. Photographer Peter Feldstein first photographed  all 700 residents of Oxford in 1984. Twenty years later, Feldstein re-photographed as many of the original residents as possible, while Bloom interviewed the residents for personal profiles. Their book, "The Oxford Project," was praised by filmmaker Ken Burns as a "powerful, confessional book [which] draws from the truth that so-called ordinary people, not those with bold-faced names, are actually heroes of our American drama."

Bloom is a professor of journalism at the University of Iowa and former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News. His book, "Postville: A Clash of Cultures in Heartland America," published in 2000, is an in-depth study of a kosher meat processing plant in rural northeast Iowa. Postville and the plant received extensive news coverage earlier this year when federal immigration agents arrested several hundred people alleged to be illegal aliens working at the plant.

Bloom's numerous published works include an essay collection, "Inside the Writer's Mind," a drama, "Shoedog," and a forthcoming book, "Tears of Mermaids," about the pearl trade.

The Joe W. Morgan Memorial Lecture at Knox College is sponsored in part by the Joe W. Morgan Memorial Fund, created to support educational activities of the College's Journalism Program. The fund was established by Ann Lee Morgan, a 1962 Knox graduate, in honor of her father, Joe Morgan, a 1934 Knox graduate and longtime editor with United Press International. Additional support for the 2008 Morgan Lecture is provided by the John and Elaine Fellowes Fund.