The La Follette School is hosting NPR White House correspondent and PBS contributor Tamara Keith as its spring Journalist in Residence in March, with a public presentation on the evening of March 29 at the Overture Center. The lecture will also be livestreamed, and a recording will be available after the event on the La Follette School’s YouTube page. As the Public Affairs Journalist in Residence, Keith will share lessons learned from over 20 years of experience as a journalist with students and faculty through class visits, student sessions, and informal meetings.
Alumni, students, faculty, and members of the La Follette community are invited to join the school’s annual Alumni and Friends Reception, which will take place March 29 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Overture Center. Following the reception, at 7 p.m. Keith will present the Paul Offner Lecture, which is open to the public. Keith’s public talk will focus on Americans’ declining trust in traditional media and the significance of this trend in a democratic society.
As president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Keith is organizing the 2023 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which will take place in Washington, D.C. in April. “We exist in a time where there often isn’t a shared set of facts,” said Keith for a recent Vanity Fair article. She hopes the dinner can highlight the good work of journalists and explain why they do what they do.
Keith has been a White House correspondent for NPR since 2014 and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, the top political news podcast in America. In that time, she has chronicled the final years of the Obama administration, covered Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for president from start to finish, and thrown herself into documenting the Trump administration.
In the final year of the Trump administration and the first year of the Biden administration, she focused her reporting on the White House response to the COVID-19 pandemic and breaking news about global vaccine sharing. Now, more than halfway into President Biden’s presidency, she continues to report on the White House agenda and President Biden’s priorities as he positions himself to run for re-election.
Keith’s visit is made possible by the Offner Lecture Series, the Kohl Initiative, and University Communications.