Krauthammer to be featured speaker at GAC

Sep 15, 2011

Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer will be the featured speaker at the “We Believe in Newspapers” gala event at the National Press Club July 22.

WASHINGTON—Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer will be the featured speaker at the “We Believe in Newspapers” gala event at the National Press Club July 22.

Krauthammer’s address will cap the National Newspaper Association’s three-day Government Affairs Conference. This year will be the 50th anniversary of the event, which occurs during NNA’s 125th anniversary of service to community newspapers.

Krauthammer, called the “most influential commentator in America” by The Financial Times has written a syndicated column for the Washington Post since 1985. It is published in more than 250 newspapers weekly.  He also is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic and appears nightly on FOX-TV’s evening news program, Special Report with Bret Baier. Krauthammer is also a physician who came to Washington in 1978 to aid the Carter administration in planning psychiatric research.

The gala event follows a behind-the-scenes tour of Voice of America on the morning of July 22.  GAC begins with a Friends of NNA reception at 6:30 p.m. July 20 at the Westin Washington Hotel, 1400 M Street NW.  A legislative briefing will be held at 5:30 p.m. July 20.

On July 21, GAC will feature press briefings from prominent newsmakers. Declared candidates for the 2012 presidential election will be invited.

The 2011 GAC offers special programming for NNA’s Next Generation newspaper people. The “Next Gen” group, chaired by Vancouver (WA) Voice Editor Ossie Bladine, will have its own gathering in the presidential suite during the opening reception. The morning of July 22, the Next Gen will be treated to a briefing and a tour of the studios at the headquarters of National Public Radio, where NPR’s director of public policy and legislation, Rishi Hingoraney, will discuss lobbying for media.

On Capitol Hill, the NNA Congressional Action Team will discuss, among other issues, the impending default on federal payments by the financially-troubled U.S. Postal Service, and how its struggles to right itself are affecting newspapers.