November 14, 2001

Contact:

Sarah Ray

802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: November 14, 2001

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - David Moats, editorial page editor of the

Rutland Herald and winner of a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a

series of editorials on the passage of the same-sex civil

unions law, will give a talk titled “Power and Timidity:

What the Civil Unions Struggle Taught Us About the Press” on

Wednesday, Nov. 28, at 8 p.m. The event, the annual Robert

W. van de Velde, Jr. Memorial Lecture, will take place in

Middlebury College’s Dana Auditorium in Sunderland Language

Center on College Street (Route 125). A reception will be

held immediately following the lecture in Sunderland lobby.

Both the lecture and the reception are free and open to the

public.

In 1982

Moats joined the Rutland Herald, where he worked as wire

editor, state editor, assistant managing editor, and city

editor. During this period he was also Vermont correspondent

for The New York Times. In 1992, he became editorial page

editor of the Herald. Prior to working at the Herald, he was

managing editor of The Valley Voice, a weekly paper in

Middlebury where he worked from 1977 to 1981. He has also

worked as an editor at the Journal-Opinion of Bradford and

briefly as a copy editor at Saturday Review magazine in San

Francisco.

He is also

the author of 11 plays, four of which have been produced in

Vermont. One play, “Hard News,” was the winner of the

Vermont Playwright’s Award from the Valley Players in

Waitsfield.

Moats

attended the University of California at Santa Barbara,

graduating in 1969 with a degree in English. From 1969 to

1972 he was a Peace Corps volunteer and staff member in

Afghanistan. He worked as an English teacher in an Afghan

school and later became involved in an emergency famine

relief project.

Robert W.

van de Velde, Jr. was a member of the Middlebury class of

1975. The memorial lecture was established in 1981 by his

parents, R.W. and Barbara van de Velde; his widow, Diana

Mooney van de Velde; and other family members and friends.

The lecture series provides an annual talk on the confluence

of public affairs -both foreign and domestic- and

journalism, particularly broadcast journalism. Previous

speakers in the series have included Frank Sesno of the

class of 1977, Cecil Forster of the class of 1964, Robert

Abernethy, former Gov. of Vermont Madeleine Kunin, Jane

Bryant Quinn of the class of 1960, and E.D.

Hirsch.