A Pulitzer Prize–winning writer for The Baltimore Sun raised concerns about the effects of new technology on the future of print media in a visit to campus on April 18.

Alice Steinbach, who appeared under the aegis of the Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellows program, visited English Prof. John Roderick’s Magazine Journalism class and later that evening delivered a Humanities Center lecture.

In her lecture Steinbach expressed concern about the potentially harmful effects of the Internet on the delivery and shaping of news today. "The problem is that rumor becomes fact, and it never used to," she said, because online reporters do not do careful fact gathering. She is also concerned about the emergence of 24-hour cable news shows, talk radio, and chat rooms, which are increasingly becoming the major sources of news for many people.

Baruch Sachs, a humanities seminar student, challenged those fears. "You’d have to be a real idiot to believe everything you see in a chat room," he said.

"You’re saying there are no idiots in this room?" Steinbach countered.

"I don’t agree with her," Sachs said later. "I don’t think she fully understands what the Internet is about and the opportunities it could afford a lot of people."

David Long, another humanities seminar student, did agree with many of Steinbach’s points. People need to be more aware, he said, and to think independently and to question what they hear; that will be the key to the future success of Internet and online news outlets.

Steinbach said it is difficult for her to consider the new breed of "presenters" as journalists. We need smart reporters who do not care only about breaking the news; they should care about getting the news. Breaking news is never the story, she said. "What you’re getting is not news; it is speculation."

The picture Steinbach painted was not entirely bleak. She did hold out hope that new journalists will "step up to the plate" and challenge the way news reporting is done today.

Earlier in the day, addressing students in the Magazine Journalism class, she described the delicate balance that magazine writers need to attain between objectivity and interpretation.

She gave four tips that one should keep in mind when writing for magazines: tell a story, write in scenes, move the action along, and find your own voice.

With eyes lit up and a big smile, Steinbach talked about her Pulitzer Prize–winning feature, "A Boy of Unusual Vision," about a blind boy and what he needed to overcome to be like any other child.

"Sometimes the best stuff you get in an interview is the stuff [the interviewees] don’t think relates at all to the interview," she said. She cited James Agee and E. B. White as major influences on her writing, influences who may also be responsible for what she termed one of her faults: a tendency to stray in her writing by injecting little pieces of herself.

Steinbach had no background in journalism when she started to write. An art history major in college, she began writing a monthly newspaper for the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her work at The Baltimore Sun was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1985. Later, she was appointed the 1998–1999 McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton University. Her first book, Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman, has just been published by Random House.

Dana Ulman, a communication major, graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in May with a bachelor of arts degree.