Peninsula College’s journalism department is celebrating First Amendment Week with special events on the college campus April 29-30. The events are free and open to community residents.

Some of the issues to be examined in a panel discussion and a Studium Generale program are how citizens are using the newspaper and the Web to strengthen civic engagement and how strong civic engagement really is as the Web increasingly becomes part of daily life.

_ The kick-off event begins at noon next Wednesday, April 29, in the college’s Little Theater. A panel will explore the topic "News on the Peninsula Horizon."

Panel members include publishers John Brewer of the Peninsula Daily News, Sue Ellen Riesau of the Sequim Gazette, Scott Wilson of the Port Townsend Leader, and Todd Ortloff, part-owner/station manager of KONP Radio in Port Angeles.

The panel will be moderated by Frank Garred, former P.C. journalism clinical professor and adviser to The Buccaneer student newspaper, and Rich Riski, journalism professor and Buccaneer adviser.

_ On Thursday, April 30, Kenneth

Kobré, a photojournalism professor at San Francisco State University, will speak at the college’s Studium Generale program at noon in the college’s Little Theater. He will provide insights into photojournalism ethics and traditional journalism in an emerging multimedia world.

He is working on a documentary movie with the working title of "Deadlines Every Second, Where Do They Come From?" referring to the Associated Press production of "3,000 images daily and a million images a year" in their photojournalism division.

Kobré will show stills from this documentary, which still is in the editing phase. Perhaps the most famous image is "The Falling Man," taken by Richard Drew of AP showing a fully clothed man jumping to his death on Sept. 11, 2001, in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Kobré plans to lead a discussion about the reason photos are published and the effects they have.

"I try to bring out and discuss the different points people have by responding to their comments," he said.

Kobré is author of the textbook "Photography" and of "How to Photograph Friends and Strangers." He also is the inventor of Professor Kobré’s Lightscoop, a device that bounces light from a built-in flash on 35mm SLR cameras.

His photographs have appeared in Newsweek, Time, Business Week, San Francisco Business and The San Francisco Examiner, among others. He also has produced seven independent video documentaries.

Throughout the entire First Amendment Week from April 27-May 1, there will be a display in the college art gallery relating to the First Amendment.

The gallery is adjacent to the Little Theater in the Pirate Union Building on campus, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., Port Angeles.

For more information, call 417-6469.