C-SPAN's Brian Lamb to Speak and Receive Kilgore Medal Wednesday
October 28, 2003
October 28, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - Brian P. Lamb, co-founder, chairman & CEO of C-SPANand a regular host on the cable network, will be on the DePauw University campus Wednesday, October 29, to speak in Meharry Hall of historic East College. Lamb's 7:30 p.m. address, "Is Journalism Ethics an Oxymoron," is free and open to the public. Following the lecture, Lamb will be presented with DePauw's Bernard C. Kilgore Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Journalism. While on campus, Lamb will also meet with DePauw's Media Fellows.
Brian Lamb, who has made a number of visits to DePauw over the years, helped found C-SPAN, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, and has served as the company's chief executive officer since its beginnings. The concept of a public affairs network that provides in-depth coverage of national and international issues was a natural for Lamb, 
who has been both a journalist and a political press secretary and who became interested in broadcasting as a child growing up in Indiana.
After graduation from Purdue University, Mr. Lamb joined the Navy; his tour included White House duty and a stint in the Pentagon public affairs office. In 1967, he went home to Lafayette, Indiana and the local television station. Washington beckoned, however, and he soon returned to the nation's capital. There, he worked as a freelance reporter for UPI, and as a Senate press secretary and White House telecommunications policy staffer.
In 1974, Brian Lamb began publishing a biweekly newsletter called The Media Report. He also covered communications issues as Washington bureau chief for CableVision magazine. It was from this vantage point that the idea of a public affairs network delivered by satellite began to take shape.
By 1977, Lamb had won the support of key cable industry executives for a channel that could deliver gavel-to-gavel coverage of the US Congress. Organizing C-SPAN as a not-for-profit company, the outlet grew 
rapidly from a part-time video programming service. Today's C-SPAN employs 244 people and offers two 24-hour video channels, C-SPAN and C-SPAN 2, plus a 50,000 watt radio station, WCSP-FM, which serves the Washington/Baltimore area.
The Bernard C. Kilgore Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Journalism honors the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and a 1929 graduate of DePauw, who was named "Business Journalist of the Century" and whose newspaper career began at the student-run, award-winning The DePauw.
Read more about Bernard Kilgore and DePauw's journalistic tradition by clicking here and here.
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