Come join us at the Mark Twain House 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 2 for a screening of the new documentary, On Deadline: Is Time Running Out for the Press? The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with local media.

 “I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man’s having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper,” Mark Twain wrote in his immortal essay “How I Edited an Agricultural Paper Once.”

Nowadays, editors do need to know something, and one of those things is the way newspapers must cope with declining readership and advertising – and how to get the same quality news onto the Internet somewhere, distinguish it from the general run of Internet rubbish, and above all, pay for it to be written, photographed or videotaped, designed and produced.

The Mark Twain House & Museum is collaborating with Connecticut Public Television and WNPR/Connecticut Public Radio on Tuesday, March 2, at 7:30 p.m., for a two-hour event, “The Death of My News Is Greatly Exaggerated.” It includes a screening of a critical new documentary on the future of newspapers by John and Rosemary Keogh O’Neill, On Deadline: Is Time Running Out for the Press? followed by a panel discussion led by WNPR’s John Dankosky along with key players in this changing trade.

Tickets are $15 ($10 for Mark Twain House & Museum and CPTV and WNPR members) and can be purchased by calling 860-280-3130.

On Deadline focuses on the near-demise of the Bristol Press and New Britain Herald two years ago, with an update to the present story, along with interviews with key figures of the news business, many of whom have brought news coverage online in serious, thoughtful and sustainable ways.

Participants on the panel, some of whom are important players in the documentary, include:
—Michael Schroeder, Editor and Publisher of The New Britain Herald and The Bristol Press, whose intervention in 2008 helped rescue those papers;
—Steve Collins, Staff Writer, The Bristol Press, who helped beat the drum for the newspaper’s plight in the Bristol community;
—Naedine Hazell, Editor, The Hartford Courant, which has been trying an unusual fusion of newspaper, television, and online news presentation;  
—Christine Stuart, Editor/Owner, CTNewsJunkie.com., which for the past four years has been covering the state government and other events like a blanket;
—Mark Pazniokas, Capitol Bureau Chief, CTMirror.org., the star state reporter who has developed this new news Web site with fellow ex-Courant hands Mike Regan, Bob Frahm and others.

On Deadline will be aired on CPTV on Thursday, March 4, at 8 p.m. (with a repeat on Friday, March 5, at 10 p.m.).  

The event is one in the museum’s continuing series of Mark Twain 2010 Centennial Celebration events . The Hartford Financial Group, Inc., is the Mark Twain House & Museum’s Centennial Sponsor.

The Mark Twain House & Museum has restored the author’s Hartford, Connecticut, home, where the author and his family lived from 1874 to 1891. Twain wrote his most important works during the years he lived there, including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  In addition to providing tours of Twain’s restored home, a National Historic Landmark, the institution offers activities and educational programs that illuminate Twain’s literary legacy and provide information about his life and times.

The house and museum at 351 Farmington Ave. are open Monday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, noon-5:30 p.m.  For more information, call 860-247-0998 or visit www.marktwainhouse.org. Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism and the Greater Hartford Arts Council.

This press release was authored by Steve Courtney and reposted with permission for promotional purposes.