Jay T. Harris

Jay T. Harris was born December 3, 1948, in Washington D.C., United States. He is the son of Richard James Harris and Margaret Estelle Burr Harris. ==Career==

He started his first job as a reporter for the Wilmington News-Journal from 1970 to 1975. He was a journalism professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago from 1975 to 1982. He became the executive editor for the Philadelphia Daily News in 1985. Harris moved on to join the Knight Ridder, the parent company of one of Mercury News. Other journalists, however, believed that it was his inflexibility that led to his resignation. After Harris's resignation, the pressure was on the San Jose Mercury News to show it was preserving quality and in that same year they added 30 new journalists to help out with Silicon Valley when it became popular. He joined the faculty of Journalism and Communication at the University of Southern California in 2002. Starting in 2000, Harris was the chair of the board of the Bay Area Council and was a member of the boards of a variety of different organizations, which included the American Press Institute, the Pacific Council on International Policy and also the Council on Foreign Relations. ==Notable works of journalism==

Jay T. Harris was working at his school newspaper while in college but didn't consider a career in journalism until he was hired by Fred Hartmann, editor Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, for a summer internship. After Harris graduated, Hartmann guided him and another correspondent through an 18-month investigative task to distinguish the 10 most dynamic heroin merchants in Wilmington, an undertaking that ended up being one of the first in computer-assisted investigative journalism. The project won the 1972 Associated Press Managing Editors' Public Service Award. Jay Harris is credited with expanding the San Jose Mercury News coverage of an increasingly diverse population. The paper launched Nuevo Mundo, a Spanish-language paper, in 1996 and Viet Mercury for the valley's substantial Vietnamese community in 1999. However, it was his eagerness to grow the business division to cover the internet insurgency that helped the paper's notoriety and earned him fans in the newsroom. On October 5, 2000, Jay T. Harris presented the annual Frederick S. Siebert lecture at Michigan State University, which was co-sponsored by Michigan Press Association. Harris entitled the speech "Press Freedoms and the Responsibility of Journalists in the age of New Media". He put in seven years at the Mercury News, which was positioned as one of the 10 best daily papers in the nation by the Columbia Journalism Review while he was in charge of extending the paper's business and innovation scope. He composed and propelled the American Society of Newspaper Editors' yearly national registration of minority work in day by day daily papers, which remains the business benchmark. While at the Mercury News, Harris built a diverse news staff, having 30 percent minorities. ==Context==

In April 2001, Harris addressed the American Society of Newspaper Editors on his rationale for resigning. Richard A. Oppel, editor of the American-Statesman in Austin, Texas and ASNE's outgoing president, said: "History will record this was the most effective and critical discourse at any point given at ASNE." The ASNE convention happened to coincide with a report, entitled "Voices of Anger, Cries of Concern", issued by journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists on the toll that industry layoffs were having on the diversity of news staffs. On May 10, 2001, Harris wrote an opinion piece for Nation magazine that further advanced his resignation speech before his colleagues. He argued that newspapers, like hospitals, were stewards who acted in the public interest and that acting to safeguard those interests at times would outweigh business decisions. Jerome Ceppos, Knight Ridder's vice president for news, responded by pointing out that the Knight-Ridder staff had been increased to 403 writer but would see a decline in about 10 to 15 positions in the next year. ==Awards==

• Associated Press Award (1972) • NABJ, Hall of Fame (1992) • NABJ, Ida B. Wells Award Winner (1992) ==See also==