MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? Marco Werman, a host, senior producer and music reporter for the BBC radio program “The World,” will speak at Middlebury College on Monday, March 5, at 4:30 p.m. His talk, titled “Putting the World Back in World Music,” will highlight his experiences as he traveled the globe seeking to understand cultures through music. The lecture is part of the college’s “Meet the Press” series and will take place in Room 220 of McCardell Bicentennial Hall. The event is free and open to the public and will include time for audience questions.

Werman has worked in journalism since the age of 16, when he began as a copy boy at the News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C. He has worked in documentary photography, print, radio and television. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Werman got his start in radio while in Burkina Faso, West Africa, writing for the BBC World News Service. “Radio impressed me in Africa,” he said. “Everybody had one, broadcasts happened in many languages, and in the two coups I witnessed, the radio station was the first target.”

In 1990, he started a public radio station in the Adirondacks in New York and hosted a daily news program for four years. He also spent six months in Rome, Italy, as a news correspondent for Monitor Radio. In 1995, he helped develop the format for “The World,” where he has worked since. For the program, Werman created the daily segment “Global Hit,” in which musicians and musical trends around the globe are linked to the news.

Werman has received several awards, including a National Federation of Community Broadcasters award for an original radio drama; a Sony Radio Academy award for an exposé on child labor in West African gold mines; a New York Festivals wards for a BBC documentary on the 1987 assassination of Burkina Faso’s president; and the first annual Unity award from the Radio and Television News Director’s Association for coverage of diversity issues.

Werman’s talk is part of Middlebury College’s “Meet the Press” lecture series and is co-sponsored by several Middlebury College organizations: the Math and English Departments, Atwater Commons, and the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. “Meet the Press” was established in 2004 by author and Scholar in Residence in English Sue Halpern. According to Halpern, the lectures are presented under the auspices of the Middlebury College Institute on Working Journalism, a program designed to bring newsmakers - reporters, editors, critics, photojournalists, bloggers and editorialists - to the Middlebury campus.

McCardell Bicentennial Hall is located on Bicentennial Way off College Street (Route 125). For more information, contact Sue Halpern at shalpern@middlebury.edu.