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Sharon Friedlander
Newman ’79
addresses students and their families, faculty
and staff gathered for Honors Convocation April
20. |
“The Internet is a powerful, influencing force.
So use the force – for good,” Sharon
Friedlander Newman ’79, an executive producer
with MSNBC, told students and their families, faculty
and staff gathered for Honors Convocation April 20.
“Challenge those of us in the mainstream media
to help keep you as informed as possible, in as fair
and honest a way as possible,” she said.
Newman is currently the executive producer for MSNBC's
Internet-centric program "The Most with Alison
Stewart." Newman joined MSNBC in 2003 as executive
producer of "Lester Holt Live" and then became
executive producer of "Connected Coast to Coast"
with hosts Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley.
Newman spent two days on campus, visiting classrooms
as part of the Oswego Alumni Association’s Alumni-in-Residence
program, in addition to her remarks at the college’s
annual award ceremony honoring 90 high-achieving students.
Her remarks at Honors Convocation were a mix of timely
insights into the Don Imus firing and the massacre at
Virginia Tech, reminiscences of her years as an undergraduate
at Oswego, and inspirational messages to the honored
students.
Relating how Virginia Tech students were text messaging
on the day of the shootings, and how words of condolence
later poured in via e-mail and blogs, Newman said, “Never
before has an event like this been experienced the way
it is over the Internet.”
She recalled watching news of Oswego’s record
snowfall in February and new students using Facebook
and MySpace to connect, and predicted that Oswego’s
“tight” community would continue to be there
for its students after graduation as well. “The
cyber-community can be empowering in all sort of ways,”
she added.
Newman began her broadcast journalism career while attending
Oswego, where she received her bachelor's degree magna
cum laude. She spent the next eight years as an anchor/reporter
for public radio in Rochester and Buffalo.
At WXXI-FM in Rochester, she collected more than a dozen
state and national awards for her coverage of politics,
education and nuclear power issues. At Buffalo's all-news
WEBR-AM, she produced and anchored several award-winning
series and became news director in 1985.
She joined NBC Radio in 1987. She reported and produced
from both national political conventions in 1988 and
was executive producer of NBC Radio's election night
coverage that year.
She later became a Washington-based correspondent for
both NBC and Mutual Radio, reporting from Capitol Hill,
the Pentagon during the Persian Gulf War and Los Angeles
during the 1992 riots. She has chased hurricanes to
the Mexican border and covered the 1992 presidential
election and the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.
She joined ABC News in 1993 as a producer/writer for
"World News Now," "World News This Morning"
and "Good Morning America News." She was named
executive producer of ABC News "World News Now"
in 2000 and supervised overnight news coverage of the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the ABC Network anthrax scare
and the latest war in Iraq. |
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