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Steve Thomma, a senior White House correspondent, will speak about the media and the presidential campaign as part of the First Amendment Day series at Iowa State University.

Thomma will present “The Press, the Presidency and the Campaign” at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in the Memorial Union Sun Room. His talk is free and open to the public.

Thomma is political editor for McClatchy, which publishes 29 daily newspapers including the Kansas City Star, the Sacramento Bee and the Miami Herald. He has covered Washington since 1987, as a regional reporter, national political correspondent, White House correspondent and chief political correspondent for Knight Ridder.

Before joining the Washington Bureau’s national staff in 1994, Thomma was Washington correspondent for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and won the National Press Club’s award for best regional reporting. He also won the White House Correspondents Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for distinguished White House coverage for his campaign work in 2000, and the Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency from the Gerald R. Ford Foundation in 2010.

Thomma was elected to the board of the White House Correspondents Association in 2011, and served as president in 2013-14.

Thomma’s talk is co-sponsored by the First Amendment Day Planning Committee, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State Daily, the Leo Mores Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by Student Government.