‘PrimeTime’ Correspondent Will Be Savitch Speaker

Sylvia Chase, ABC News correspondent for PrimeTime Thursday, will deliver this year’s Jessica Savitch Distinguished Journalism Lecture Series talk in the Roy H. Park School of Communications. Titled "Television News: Maybe Henny Penny Is Right," her presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, April 25, at 7:30 p.m. in the Emerson Suites, Phillips Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Chase began her television journalism career in 1971 as a general assignment reporter for CBS. In 1977 she moved to ABC News and spent the next seven years as a correspondent for 20/20, winning two Emmy Awards and two National Headliner Awards.

In 1985 Chase left network television to serve as news anchor and investigative reporter for KRON-TV in San Francisco, where she won the 1989 George Foster Peabody Award for a one-hour documentary about homeless children and their families and an honorable mention from the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards for a documentary examining infant mortality.

In 1990 Chase rejoined ABC as a correspondent for PrimeTime. A story she did in 1999 questioning the evidence used to convict a Texas woman for murdering her two sons prompted a new trial. She has also reported on gay couples trying to find surrogate mothers to bear their children and a Georgia physician who sold the children of unwed mothers to childless couples.

In 1991 New York Women in Communications presented Chase with a Matrix Award. Given annually, these awards recognize exceptional women in the fields of advertising, books, broadcasting, magazines, new media, newspapers, public relations, and arts and entertainment. Past recipients include Katie Couric, Jane Bryant Quinn, Meryl Streep, Grace Mirabella, and Maya Angelou.

A native of Minnesota, Chase holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Jessica Savitch Distinguished Journalism Lecture Series honors the 1968 Ithaca College graduate who became an Emmy Award-winning NBC News anchor and correspondent.

For more information call Danah Moore in the Park School at 274-1023.