MIDDLEBURY, Vt. ? Rolling Stone editor Eric Bates will speak on Tuesday, Oct. 28, at 4:30 p.m. The lecture is part of the college’s “Meet the Press” series and will take place in Room 216 of McCardell Bicentennial Hall, located on Bicentennial Way off College Street (Route 125). In his talk, titled “One Week to go Till the 2008 Presidential Election: Obama, McCain, Polls, Predictions, Pundits,” Bates will discuss the election, the candidates and the campaign. The event is free and open to the public and will include time for audience questions.

Bates became executive editor at Rolling Stone in February 2008. He oversees the magazine’s feature stories and national affairs reporting. This past March, he appeared live on MSNBC to discuss the magazine’s endorsement of Barack Obama and he recently spent the day with Obama for a one-on-one interview that will be an upcoming cover story.

Previously, as an investigative editor at Mother Jones, Bates helped revitalize the magazine and restore its reputation for in-depth journalism. He also served for eight years as editor in chief of Southern Exposure, a leading political journal, where he oversaw groundbreaking investigations on poultry farming, nursing homes, welfare reform and predatory lending. Bates has worked in journalism for more than two decades, earning many honors, including six National Magazine Awards.

Bates has served as a visiting lecturer in public policy at Duke University and as a trustee of Antioch University. He maintains a blog at www.rollingstone.com/blogs/caprilounge/eric-bates/.

He was regularly featured as an intern supervisor on the MTV reality show, “I’m From Rolling Stone,” which pitted young journalists against each other for a coveted contributing editor position to the magazine. Bates is also the director the magazine’s annual College Journalism Competition.

His talk is co-sponsored by several Middlebury College organizations: The Institute for Working Journalism, Brainerd Commons and the Department of English and American Literatures. “Meet the Press” was established in 2003 by author and Scholar-in-Residence in English Sue Halpern. The lectures, presented under the auspices of the Middlebury College Institute on Working Journalism, are designed to bring newsmakers - reporters, editors, critics, photojournalists, bloggers and editorialists - to the Middlebury campus.

For more information, contact Sue Halpern at shalpern@middlebury.edu.