Chicago Tribune columnist to address WC's commencement

 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Clarence Page will be the guest speaker at Wilmington College's 134 commencement Saturday, May 8.
Some 338 bachelor’s and master’s degrees will be conferred upon graduates from WC’s main campus, the graduate education program and Cincinnati Branches in Blue Ash and at Cincinnati State Community and Technical College.

Also, three honorary degrees will be conferred. Page and WC alumnus and trustee Roy Joe Stuckey will receive the doctor of humane letters degree while David Harcum, an alumnus and the College’s first “life trustee,” will receive a doctor of business administration.

Page, a syndicated columnist with the Chicago Tribune, has a number of Ohio connections, as he was born in Dayton and graduated from Middletown High School and Ohio University. Also, early in his career, he worked as a freelance writer and photographer for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Enquirer.

He originally joined the Tribune as a new college graduate in 1969 before serving in the U.S. Army. Returning to the newspaper, Page covered a variety of beats, including police, religion and neighborhood news. He was a contributor to a Tribune task force series on vote fraud, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972.

Page was a foreign correspondent for a year in Africa — during which time he received the Edward Scott Beck Award for overseas reporting — and returned to Chicago as assistant city editor.

Page left the Tribune in 1980 to direct the Community Affairs Department of a CBS-owned television station. A highlight of his work there was the station’s coverage of Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign in Chicago, which resulted in Page gaining national prominence as a “political expert.”

He returned once again to the Tribune in 1984, taking on the role of columnist and member of the editorial board. His column, now syndicated in some 150 newspapers, won a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. It appears Sundays and Wednesdays on the Tribune’s op-ed page.

Also, Page is the author of the books, "Showing my Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity" and "A Bridge to the New Media Century."

An occasional panelist on television’s "The McLaughlin Group," he regularly contributes essays to "News Hour with Jim Lehrer" and served as host of several Public Broadcasting System documentaries. In addition, he is a regular panelist on Black Entertainment Television’s weekly Lead Story program and an occasional commentator on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

He and his wife, Lisa, are the parents of a son, Grady Jonathan.