Investigative journalist to visit UNH

Investigative journalist John Christie, UNH ’70, will give a talk entitled “Leaving journalism’s false god behind” on Tuesday, April 1 at 5 p.m. in MUB Theater I. The talk is free and open to the public.

Christie, editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, is the 2014 Donald M. Murray Visiting Journalist. He will visit journalism classes and meet with the staff of The New Hampshire while on campus.

For more information on Christie's visit, go to http://cola.unh.edu/english/program/englishjournalism-ba/visiting-journalist-program.

He founded the non-profit investigative news service based in the state’s capitol, Augusta, in 2009 with his wife, Naomi Schalit, and has served as its publisher and senior reporter.

The Center has published more than 150 investigative stories about Maine state government that have distributed as a public service to more than 30 Maine daily and weekly newspapers.

Christie is a media veteran whose 40-year career includes work in Massachusetts, Maine and Florida as a writer, editor, general manager and publisher for newspapers owned by Tribune Co., Dow Jones and Co. and the Seattle Times Co.

He has won numerous awards as a reporter and editor, including twice for best public service reporting in New England from the AP, and he was the primary editor at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of two Pulitzer Prize finalists.

Christie was one of the first journalists to serve as a full-time training editor for a newspaper, a position that included coaching writers and editors on their craft and creating a news writing program for high school and college minority students.

Christie, a native of Dover, N.H., learned the craft of writing and coaching writers as an undergraduate at the University of New Hampshire (class of 1970), where he was a student of Professor Donald M. Murray and managing editor of The New Hampshire.

He is the editor of four books, including a bestselling book on Hurricane Andrew. His freelance work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, Boston magazine, Yankee magazine and elsewhere. He has spoken on newspaper management and writing in the United States, Europe and South America.

In 2009, he retired after nine years as the president and publisher of Central Maine Newspapers, which publishes two daily papers, the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel. The retirement lasted only a few months when he founded the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

His industry service includes: visiting faculty at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies; past president of the Massachusetts State House Correspondents Association; past president of Maine Newspaper Publishers Association; and the journalism advisory board at Florida International University.