Sharif Durhams will speak during the forum, which will begin at 7 p.m. April 28 in Gantner Concert Hall of the Haas Fine Arts Center. The event also will be available via Zoom.
The forum is free and open to the public.
Durhams is a deputy managing editor at The Washington Post where he oversees the general assignment news desk, the Morning Mix team and the live desk, and works with the foreign desk.
He rejoined The Post in 2022 after serving as managing editor of North Carolina’s News & Observer and Herald-Sun, where he also was interim editor for several months. During an earlier stint at The Post, he was homepage editor. His career also has included serving in editor positions at CNN; overseeing social media and digital strategy at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where he also worked as a reporter; and serving as a reporter at the Charlotte Observer.
Durhams made history by becoming the first African American editor of the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied journalism and political science. He has long been an advocate of improving diversity and representation in newsrooms. He is a member of NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, which he has led as an elected national board president since 2018, and of the National Association of Black Journalists. His work as an adjunct faculty member at the Poynter Institute has focused on diversity in digital media, where he was co-leader of the Poynter-Washington Post Leadership Academy for Diversity in Media in 2019.
His awards include the 2019 NABJ LGBTQ Task Force Visibility Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Television Network Website in 2018 and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Award for Breaking News in 2008.
About the Devroy event
Ann Devroy, who graduated from UW-Eau Claire in 1970 with a degree in journalism, often is described as one of the best journalists to ever cover the White House.
After she died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 49, her family and colleagues at The Washington Post wanted to honor her memory. Since she often served as a mentor to other journalists, those who knew her well decided the best way to honor her was to give young journalists a chance to follow in her footsteps.
In 1998, they established the Ann Devroy Memorial Forum and Ann Devroy Memorial Fellowship program at UW-Eau Claire, where she got her start.
Every spring, the Devroy Forum features a prominent national journalist, who comes to campus to interact with journalism students and to speak at the Devroy Forum.
Each year during the forum, the winner of the Ann Devroy Memorial Fellowship is announced. The fellowship, awarded to an outstanding UW-Eau Claire journalism student, includes a scholarship and a three-week fellowship at The Washington Post, and eligibility to apply for a paid summer internship at a Wisconsin daily newspaper.
For more information about the Devroy event, contact Dr. Kristine Knutson at 715-836-3268 or knutsokm@uwec.edu.
