Pitt Oct. 16 Career Day Panel to Feature Communication Professionals

PITTSBURGH—The University of Pittsburgh Department of English will hold its annual Career Day panel from 2 to 4 p.m. Oct. 16 in the William Pitt Union Lower Lounge, 3959 Fifth Ave., in Oakland. The free event, featuring communication professionals, is open to the public.

Pitt's Al McDowell Memorial Scholarship, named in honor of the late television newsman, will be presented at the event. The scholarship supports an undergraduate student in the English department's nonfiction writing program.

Career Day panelists are Cindy Skrzycki, Washington Post columnist, author, and Pitt's Journalist in Residence for the 2003-2004 term; Steve Segal, managing editor of Pittsburgh Magazine; Jim Ritchie, reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; Beth Marcello, president of PRwriting; Stephanie Huszar, fashion writer for CosmoGIRL!, Woman's World, and The New York Times; and Kim Crow, assistant features editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Harry Kloman, Pitt's journalism program coordinator, will moderate.

In 15 years at The Washington Post, Skrzycki has specialized in management and technology issues, with special expertise in the business of federal regulation. She is the author of a recently published book called The Regulators: The Anonymous Power Brokers Who Shape Your Life (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003). Since November 1993, she has written a weekly column, "The Regulators," which examines the gritty work of Washington regulation.

Before joining the Post, Skrzycki was an associate business editor at U.S. News & World Report, specializing in transportation issues, and a Washington correspondent for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, covering business issues. She had previously worked in the Washington bureau of the Fairchild News Service, covering the steel industry, and was a business writer for The Buffalo News.

Segal, from the Pitt College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) class of 1997, was a Chancellor's Scholar and served as the editor of Impulse, a Friday feature magazine published by The Pitt News. Segal began his career as the art editor of In Pittsburgh Weekly and later was promoted to editor. He went on to become editor of Whirl magazine before assuming his current position at Pittsburgh Magazine. Segal is a member and past chair of the Student Publications Board, which advises The Pitt News, and he periodically meets with Pitt News students to talk about newspaper design.

Ritchie graduated from Pitt's CAS with a Bachelor of Arts degree in rhetorical communication in 1992. He took most of the English department's journalism-related courses, which led him to write for The Pitt News. He also did freelance writing. After graduation, Ritchie wrote for the Valley News Dispatch, a daily suburban newspaper in Allegheny County, for six years. He joined the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review five years ago and is now its transportation writer, focusing primarily on airline, aviation, and highway issues. Winner of various writing awards, Ritchie has been a guest on several news-radio programs.

Marcello has 20 years of writing, public relations, and marketing experience. In the 1980s, she was the assistant director of government relations for the University of Pittsburgh's former Medical and Health Care Division (now UPMC). In 1990, she started her own company, PRwriting, a South Side business that specializes in writing newsletters, trade magazine articles, brochures, and sales marketing material for such corporate clients as Federal Investigators, National City Bank, Saint Vincent College, and the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

Before starting her own company, Marcello worked in publications, media relations, government relations, special events, and community organizing at for-profit, nonprofit, and government organizations. She is the author of Passport to Pittsburgh: The New Airport and International City (Community Communications, 1993), a publication commemorating the opening of the new Pittsburgh International Airport in 1993.

Huszar, a 1999 Pitt CAS graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English writing, worked at The Pitt News as a copy editor and at Impulse magazine as a features editor. She won the Al McDowell scholarship for nonfiction writing as well as the Women's Press Club of Pittsburgh Scholarship. After graduation, she worked at the Tribune-Review, covering fashion and lifestyle. She moved to New York City to take a position as associate beauty editor at CosmoGIRL! magazine and is currently working with Woman's World magazine as an associate editor. Huszar also regularly contributes items to the New York Times Pulse section, a trend column that appears in the paper's Sunday Styles section. Her work has appeared in Country Living magazine, and she has a piece to be published in Maxim magazine.

Crow has worked as a police-beat reporter, copy editor, page designer, pop music critic, books page editor, page designer and design director, and a deputy graphics editor. Before joining the Post-Gazette, Crow worked at Gannett Suburban Newspapers in New York, the Charlotte Observer, and the Tacoma News-Tribune.

Winner of numerous page design awards, Crow has won nine awards of excellence and a silver medal from the Society of News Design, several Print Regional design awards, and first-place page design awards for four straight years in Pennsylvania's Keystone awards. This year, she was a judge at the 24th annual Society for Newspaper Design awards; she has judged several college competitions as well as many statewide print media contests.

The Career Day event is cosponsored by The Pitt News. For more information, call 412-624-6506.

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10/14/03/mgc