Award-Winning Associated Press Veterans To Discuss Their Work March 27 at U. T. Dallas

RICHARDSON, Texas (March 3, 2003) – Two of the most highly respected newsmen in Texas, John Lumpkin and Mike Cochran, will discuss their writing collaborations at a McDermott Library-UTD Mercury Writers Series Lecture Thursday, March 27, from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m., in the Kusch Auditorium located in the Founders North Building on The University of Texas at Dallas campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Lumpkin is the bureau chief for the Associated Press in Dallas, where he directs the news service’s news and photo report in Texas from its LBJ Freeway headquarters and oversees AP marketing efforts. Cochran joined The Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a senior writer in 1999 after 39 years with the AP.

Lumpkin and Cochran have produced two books together – And Deliver Us From Evil and West Texas, A Portrait of its People and their Raw and Wondrous Land. The two won a Dallas Press Club Katie Award for an essay on West Texas that was the inspiration for the book.

“We are obviously delighted whenever we can bring talented people of this caliber to our university,” said Dr. Larry Sall, director of libraries at UTD. “Both John and Mike have witnessed and written about history that has influenced our lives for decades – from the Kennedy assassination to the recent Columbia disaster. What they have to say about journalism and writing carries significant importance.”

About John Lumpkin
Lumpkin is a native of Nashville, Tenn., and a graduate of the University of Virginia. He was a reporter for The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He joined the AP in Dallas in 1971 and served as San Antonio correspondent, Dallas assistant chief of bureau, chief of bureau for North Carolina and chief of bureau in Des Moines, Iowa, before becoming Dallas bureau chief in April 1992.

Major stories he covered include the return of the Vietnam prisoners of war, the Watergate-related milk fund scandal, the Apollo-Soyuz joint U.S.-Soviet space mission and the visit to rural America of Pope John Paul. In Texas, he has overseen the coverage of the Republican Conventions in 1984 and 1990, the savings and loan crisis, the oil crisis, the 51-day Branch Davidian siege, the problems and successes of The Dallas Cowboys, the dramatic rescue of Baby Jessica from the well, the ascent of George W. Bush to the Presidency and the Shuttle Columbia disaster, among other stories. During that time, the AP has won the top Texas Headliner Award for reporting three times and has been recognized nationally by the AP for young writers, for feature writing, sports writing and for investigative enterprise. Lumpkin won a Katie Award in 2002 for specialty reporting. Lumpkin is a director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas.

About Mike Cochran
During his nearly four-decade career at the AP, Cochran was named the Texas AP Managing Editors’ Staffer of the Year winner 10 times, including 1998, his final full year with the news service. Other writing awards he has won include the Headliners Star Reporter of the Year in 1983 and 1988, the AP Managing Editors Top Performance Award worldwide for feature writing, the 1987 Headliners Award for Best Feature, a Headliners Award for profile in 1991 and the 1987 and 1991 TIL awards for journalism.

Cochran began his career as a sportswriter for newspapers in Denton and Abilene. He joined the AP in Dallas in 1960 and opened the AP’s Fort Worth bureau in 1961. He took time off from the AP in the 1970s to write “Texas vs. Davis,” a book about the Cullen Davis murder case.

“You can love him, you can hate him, but you can’t ignore him,” celebrated lawyer Richard “Racehorse” Haines once said of Cochran.

Cochran grew up in the small West Texas town of Stamford, the elder son of a utility company salesman and high school English teacher. He studied journalism at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and North Texas State University in Denton, to which he returned 30 years later as North Texas’ 1988 Distinguished Alumnus.

About UTD
The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor, enrolls more than 13,000 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s Web site at http://www.utdallas.edu/.