Renaming Ceremony for William Randolph Hearst Building, Nov. 7

Event: The Texas Student Media building, which houses The Daily Texan, the Cactus Yearbook, KVRX 91.7 FM and Texas Student Television, will be renamed the William Randolph Hearst building in a ceremony during the Texas Student Media Reunion.

When: 2 p.m. Nov. 7, 2008

Where: The William Randolph Hearst building (formerly the Texas Student Media building) in the Jesse H. Jones Communication Center on The University of Texas at Austin campus.

Background: The building is being renamed in appreciation of a recent $750,000 grant from the Hearst Foundations to help renovate the building, as well as other gifts from the foundations and the Hearst Corporation totaling $5 million. These include a faculty fellowship endowment to help support faculty members in the College of Communication, the Frank A. Bennack Chair in Journalism and the William Randolph Hearst Endowment for Visiting Professionals program, and gifts to the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston.

With 700 students working for the Texas Student Media program at any given time, it is the largest pre-professional program of its kind. Renovating the 25,000-square-foot William Randolph Hearst building will open space for the computer and digital technologies such as online journalism, interactive advertising and convergent media that are the hallmarks of the new media era. It also will create space to foster the collaboration required among students, faculty and volunteer professionals from different disciplines as they explore strategies to capture and sustain audience attention in the quickly evolving world of new media.

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Contacts:
Kathy Lawrence
512-471-5084
or
Erin Geisler
512-475-8071