University News

Bill Knight (WIU VPC Photo)
[Download Print-Quality Image]

Bill Knight Retirement Reception April 19

April 3, 2012

Share |
Printer friendly version

MACOMB, IL – A retirement reception for Journalism Professor Bill Knight at Western Illinois University will be held from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, April 19 in the University Union Lamoine Room.

Knight has taught journalism for more than 20 years at Western Illinois, all the while remaining an award-winning active columnist, radio commentator and author. He writes twice-weekly columns for newspapers in Pekin, Peoria, Monmouth, Galesburg, Kewanee and Macomb. He is the author of the 2003 "Video Almanac" and "Fair Comment: Essays on the Air," and he is a featured weekly commentator on Western's Tri States Public Radio.

In June 2010, Knight was named one of a "Golden Dozen" by the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors (ISWNE) for his May 2009 opinion piece on moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to Illinois. The op-ed, "Illinois Can Handle Detainees," which commented on moving nearly 250 Guantanamo Bay terror suspects to Illinois, was published more than five months before the government began looking at the Thompson Correctional Center in Carroll County.

In Fall 2010, Knight presented the annual College of Arts and Sciences John Hallwas Liberal Arts Lecture. Also among his numerous honors are awards from the Illinois Associated Press (Best Commentary), the Illinois Press Association (Business Reporting), the International Labor Communications Association (Best Column) and the Suburban Newspapers Association of America (Best Sports Writing.)

A graduate of Carthage (IL) High School (1967), WIU (1971) and the University of Illinois-Springfield (1982), Knight's books include "Horse Shoe Bottoms" (2008), a 1930s novel by west-central Illinois journalist and activist Tom Tippett, for which Knight wrote the biographical introduction and edited; and "Rick Johnson Reader: Tin Cans, Squeems and Thud Pies" (2007), a collection of rock criticism, essays on popular culture and zany screeds by Johnson, the late Creem magazine writer who had attended WIU. Knight also is the editor of Western's College of Arts and Science's magazine "Focus," which is published twice yearly since Spring 2005.

The April 19 reception will include appetizers, beverages and entertainment by recording artists Patrick Hazell, with Sally Weisenberg and Don Berbaum and Ken Carlysle.

Cards and notes for Knight may be sent to the WIU Journalism Program, c/o Clara Carrigan, 226-D Simpkins Hall, 1 University Circle, Macomb, IL 61455-1390.


Posted By: University Communications (U-Communications@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing