The book, which highlights such iconic players as Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Harry Hooper, “Smokey” Joe Wood and Bill Carrigan, tells the story of baseball’s coming out party as a major professsional sports league and how the team put aside their cultural and political differences in the clubhouse to create greatness on the field.

P.J. Crowley

Event: P.J. Crowley – The Washington Perspective: Foreign Policy in 2011

Host: College of Communication (COM)

Date: Thursday, March 10, 2011

Time: 12 – 2 p.m.

Place: COM student lounge (640 Commonwealth Ave.)

Admission: Free and open to the public

P.J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Public Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State, is the public face of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy. Throughout the recent upheaval in the Middle East, Crowley has appeared regularly on CNN and news outlets throughout the world, giving the Administration’s perspective on the evolving crisis. Crowley has worked under Hillary Clinton for the past two years, handling communications for every international crisis, from the war in Afghanistan and the arrest of a CIA agent in Pakistan to the devastating earthquake in Haiti and the ongoing AIDS crisis in Africa.

The event is free and open to the public at BU’s Tsai Performance Center (685 Commonwealth Ave.); doors open at 6:25 p.m. and seating is first come, first serve.

More information is available here.

Open to the public, admission for the popular event is free and seating is on a first come, first serve basis.

This year’s finalists are:

The Life Smugglers - directed by David Wells

¿Que? – directed by Stephen Ohl, Dimitri Kouri, Zack McGeehan & Michael Nusbaum

Salty Dogs – directed by Dimitri Kouri& Zack McGeehan

Your Way Home – directed by Pietro Nigro

Seashells – directed by Álvaro Congosto

September – directed by Maya Tanaka

Sponsored by Sumner Redstone, founder and Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Viacom, the Redstone Festival is recognized as one of New England’s premier film venues.  Showcasing the best short films written and directed by COM’s undergraduate and graduate students, the short subject films range from entertaining and whimsical vignettes to touching and powerful dramatic episodes.

“The Redstone Festival screenings in Boston, Los Angeles and New York, are the most anticipated events of the year for BU Film and TV and we are excited to showcase the best films that our department produces,” said Paul Schneider, Chairman of the Department of Film & Television at COM. “And, this year we are adding a new competitive category to our Los Angeles Redstone event. We will be screening a winning short by one of our alumni to be selected by a faculty panel.”

On April 1, 2011, the Redstone Festival travels to Los Angeles where student films compete again for a West Coast-based panel of judges. In addition, COM has announced a new “Best Alumni Short” category for the Los Angeles competition. To qualify, films must have been produced or directed by a BU Alum post-graduation. The running length must be no longer than 30 minutes and must be on DVD format (Blu-Ray preferred). The deadline for entry into the Alumni category is February 25, 2011.

The program, which supports both children and their parents, is designed to teach English and equip families with the skills and information needed to adapt to everyday life in the United States.  It serves anywhere from 75 to 90 families at a time, and over the course of approximately 20 years has helped more than 2,400 families.  In addition to English, the program teaches things like understanding job applications, newspaper articles, citizenship materials, and financial forms. Classroom discussions also cover fire safety, crime prevention, lead paint, and even trash day.

The series continues tomorrow with two parts. One will examine the School of Law’s (LAW) Asylum & Human Rights Clinic (AHR), where law students represent asylum seekers and others involved in immigration and humanitarian cases; the other will look at the interpreter certificate program at the University’s Center for Professional Education, which trains multilingual students in community, legal and medical interpreting.

Charles Kravetz

Charles Kravetz, the founding news & programming director and station manager of New England Cable News (NECN), has been appointed the new general manager of WBUR-FM, effective January 1, 2011. Kravetz succeeds Paul A. La Camera who was appointed general manager in September of 2005 and will now take a two-year appointment as BU’s administrator of public radio, a new job in which he’ll help manage both the leadership transition and public representation of the station.

Kravetz has set his immediate sights on creating new programs, bolstering the station’s new marketing campaign “UR WBUR” and enhancing the station’s digital presence, along with the continued drive to decrease time spent on-air fundraising and seeking alternative means of reaching donors.

“The challenges that WBUR faces are many, like every organization in the media, but it comes to those challenges from a position of strength,” said Kravetz. “Our listeners want access to the quality journalism we do in every platform, whether it’s an iPad, an iPhone, any written form through the Web, through Twitter.”

Kravetz joins WBUR at a time when the station has held its listener lead against a remade public radio competitor, Brighton-based WGBH. WBUR ranked 11th in the Boston radio market Arbitron ratings in October, versus 24th for WGBH.

“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to take over the leadership of an organization that is in such a strong position,” said Kravetz. “WBUR is uniquely situated in the Boston market. It is financially sound and owned by an extraordinary academic institution that supports it and gives it the freedom to do the kind of quality journalism we all admire.”

In 1992, NECN hired Kravetz to engineer its news operation from scratch. In five months, he oversaw the building of a newsroom, hiring of 90 staffers, and the start of 24 hours-a-day programming. Over 16 years, he opened four New England satellite bureaus, started the country’s first streaming video news site, and secured NECN’s perch among the top 10-rated Boston cable channels. He also led the news team to Peabody, Murrow, and duPont-Columbia awards.

In 2008, Kravetz was appointed NECN’s president/general manager where he guided the channel through its expanding distribution, now reaching almost 4 million homes, making it the largest regional cable news channel in the country. Prior to his post at NECN, Kravetz was an executive at WCVB-TV from1980 to1991, where he was responsible for creating the long-running TV newsmagazine Chronicle as its original producer and executive producer, later rising to assistant news director at Boston’s ABC affiliate.

R.D. Sahl

Long-time New England Cable News (NECN) anchor R. D. Sahl will join the journalism department at Boston University beginning in January 2011. Sahl, who brings to BU 40 years of broadcast journalism experience, will remain at NECN as a special contributor.

“It’s been my privilege to be part of NECN for more than 13 years. This newsroom has been an important part of my life and my career, but it’s time for me to turn a page. That turn takes me to Boston University’s Department of Journalism. I’ve picked up a few lessons over the last 40 years, and I hope to bring those lessons to the classroom,” said Sahl.

“Our students will be the beneficiaries of R.D. Sahl’s career in which he epitomized the kind of accurate, objective and compelling reporting that we believe is so critical for students to learn in the frantic age of digital journalism. He not only brings a legacy of local, national and international reporting to our classrooms, but also his reputation as a trusted news anchor familiar to literally millions of NECN viewers across the six New England states,” said Tom Fiedler, Dean of Boston University’s College of Communication (COM).

Sahl has anchored the NECN primetime news since 1997 and is the host of Right Now with RD Sahl and co-host of NECN Business and NECN Tonight. Sahl has earned multiple Emmy Awards for his reporting and anchoring and has covered every major story during his 15-year tenure at NECN, including the attacks on 9/11, the clergy abuse crisis, and most recently the Haitian earthquake. During his tenure, Sahl has made numerous foreign trips with assignments in Haiti, Cuba, Italy, France, Germany and Japan.