KINGSTON, R.I. –March 18, 2008—The University of Rhode Island will host an Associated Press BREAKING NEWS exhibit for the month of April on the first floor of the URI Library, 15 Lippitt Road, Kingston campus. The library is open Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight, Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to midnight. Hours are subject to change. For the latest information, call 401-874-2672.
Specifically, the University will display five double-sided stand up banners featuring photos and captions from BREAKING NEWS: How the Associated Press has Covered War, Peace, and Everything Else. The 2007 book takes readers outside the bureaus and into the fields to experience AP’s groundbreaking reporting on war, politics, crime, disasters, and sports. A six-minute video and a six-month photo show accompany the exhibit.
The exhibit recounts the stories behind the New York-based news agency’s documentation of world events since its founding in 1846. It shows Kathryn Johnson in 1961 wearing bobby sox and a sweater to look like a student so she could gain entry to the University of Georgia campus to see Charlayne Hunter integrate the school on her first day of classes. It also shows wars fought far from home and disasters suffered close to home, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
Visitors will learn how AP reporter Joseph I. Gilbert borrowed Abraham Lincoln’s own handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address to provide the most accurate account of what the President said at that solemn occasion in 1863.
Today the Associated Press, winner of 49 Pulitzer Prizes, has 243 bureaus in 97 countries. It employs 4,100 staff members worldwide and has more than 500,000 moving image news stories from 1896 to the present day available from the AP Archive. On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news from AP.
Pictured above
AP correspondent Wes Gallagher races for a phone to report news of the verdict at the Nuremburg war crimes trials – Oct. 1, 1946. AP Photo
Atlanta-based AP reporter Kathryn Johnson, left, dressed like “just another student” – bobby socks and a sweater — in 1961 so she could gain access to the University of Georgia campus and get the only eyewitness account of Charlayne Hunter’s (right) first day of integrating classes. Other reporters were blocked by school officials. AP Photo.