April 14, 1998

Emmy Award-Winning CNN Anchor Jeanne Meserve to

Present Middlebury College’s Annual Robert van de Velde Lecture

Jeanne Meserve, an Emmy Award-winning

anchor and correspondent for CNN, will deliver the Robert W. van

de Velde, Jr. Memorial Lecture on “Sex,

Lies and Audiotape: Is This the News?”

at 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28 in the auditorium of Middlebury

College’s Twilight Hall on College Street. Meserve is a Middlebury

alumna from the class of 1974. The lecture, which was originally

scheduled for Jan. 7 and canceled due to bad weather, is open

to the public and free of charge.

Based in CNN’s Washington, D.C. bureau, Meserve has

a variety of anchoring responsibilities on the weekend, including

“Early Prime,” “The World Today,” “PrimeNews,”

and “World News.” Meserve, who joined CNN in

1993, won an Emmy in 1997 for her contribution to the network’s

coverage of the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta.

Meserve’s work at CNN includes anchoring coverage

of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin-reporting

that won a New York Festival Gold Medal. She also served as a

floor reporter during both the Republican and Democratic 1996

national conventions.

Meserve was an ABC-TV news correspondent for eight

years covering a variety of beats, including the White House and

State Department. At ABC, Meserve reported extensively from overseas.

She covered Beijing in the wake of the Tiananmen Square uprising,

and reported on the hostage situation in Lebanon, tensions in

the Persian Gulf, and the intricacies of U.S. Soviet relations.

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, Governor Madeleine Kunin, Raymond Benson,

Jane Bryant Quinn of the class of 1960, Karl Meyer and E.D. Hirsch.