Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Huffington Post technology and innovations editor José Antonio Vargas will examine the state of professional journalism in The Brave New World of Journalism, a free public lecture at 7 p.m. Nov. 12 in the Partrich Auditorium of the Wayne State University Law School. Hosted by the Wayne State Center for the Study of Citizenship, it is part of the center's Citizen Media project.

In his presentation, Vargas will discuss how news is collected and disseminated, how the boundaries between citizen and journalist often overlap, and the implications that all of these changes have for the future of journalism. Vargas's career embodies the ongoing revolution in the field. As a national political reporter for the Washington Post, he broke new ground with his in-depth coverage of the Internet's impact on politics. He also wrote about video game culture and race and demographics, among other topics, and his 2006 series on HIV/AIDS in Washington inspired a feature-length documentary, The Other City, slated for release next year. In 2008, he won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a team that covered the Virginia Tech massacre.

Vargas also will be the keynote speaker at a national conference hosted by Wayne State Nov. 12-13 to explore the impact of social media on Gen-X engagement. The private conference kicks off "eCitizenship: New Tools, New Strategies, New Spaces," a three-year project sponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and The New York Times in partnership with Wayne State's Center for the Study of Citizenship. The center is the official research arm of the project as well as the host location for eCitizenship campuses to collaborate on the study of relationships between social networking and civic engagement.

More about José Vargas can be found on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube or http://www.joseantoniovargas.com/. For more information about the lecture, visit http://www.clas.wayne.edu/citizenship/.