Penny Muse Abernathy will present “Can Democracy Thrive without Local Journalism?” at the Monadnock Summer Lyceum Sunday Aug. 13, at 11 a.m. at Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church, 25 Main St.
Abernathy will examine how and why the trend of falling weekday newspaper circulation is escalating and ways the public can help save local news and nurture grassroots journalism. She began her career fresh out of high school, writing for the Laurinburg Exchange. After graduating from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, she wrote for the Fayetteville Times, then moved on to the larger Dallas market. While writing for the Dallas Times-Herald, she recognized the need to learn more about financing and earned an MBA and adhered to a mentor’s advice, “If you care about good journalism, you need to learn the business.”
She has received a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship to study journalism at Columbia University, led The Wall Street Journal international division and created the strategic planning department for the Harvard Business Review. Returning to UNC, she created the classes “Digital Media Economics” and “Leadership in a Time of Change.” In 2019 she was awarded the Columbia Journalism School’s Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize recognizing “her impact on the journalism profession and prompting a call to action about the local news crisis.””
Moderating the program will be Heather McKernan, who has been publisher of the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript since 1995. She earned an undergraduate degree in writing from Saint Lawrence University and an MBA and master’s in journalism from Syracuse University.
Welcome music begins at 10:30 a.m. with the Hillside Trio of Susan Henkel, Doug Nelson and Barbara Summers.