Juan Williams will speak at this year’s New York Press Club Journalism conference next Saturday. This year’s theme is “Crisis and Change.” Williams will talk about being dismissed by NPR last October for remarks he made on “The O’Reilly Factor” about passengers boarding planes wearing Muslim attire. The day after he was fired, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes gave Williams a fat new contract.
We’ve also learned today that Ellen Weiss, who fired Williams and was later let go in the wake of the controversy, has been named executive editor at The Center for Public Integrity, one of the country’s oldest and largest nonprofit investigative news organizations. Weiss will oversee the Center’s domestic investigations and editorial staff. Weiss HAD spent 29 years at the public radio network, leading the NPR news division for five years.