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CORVALLIS - Floyd McKay, a long-time Oregon print and broadcast journalist, will deliver the 2002 Gov. Tom McCall Memorial Lectureship in Public Affairs at Oregon State University on Thursday, Oct. 24.

His talk, "The Oregon System, the Oregon Story and the New Century," begins at 7 p.m. in the Construction and Engineering Auditorium of LaSells Stewart Center. It is free and open to the public.

McKay, now a professor and chair of the Department of Journalism at Western Washington University, was one of Oregon's best known journalists and political analysts for nearly three decades. He began his career with a community newspaper, The Springfield News, in 1958, and then two years later moved to The Oregon Statesman in Salem where he began covering the political scene.

For the next decade, McKay covered a variety of news but focused on the legislature, the Governor's Office, and other facets of state government. It was here that he came to known Tom McCall, Oregon's maverick governor, whose two terms at the helm helped develop the state's national reputation for progressive political decisions.

McKay left the Statesman in 1970, becoming the news analyst for KGW-TV, where he remained a fixture for 16 years.

In 1987, McKay was named administrative assistant to then Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt, a post he retained for two years.

Knowledgeable about Oregon's political and journalistic history, McKay is the author of a book about Charles Sprague, a former Oregon governor and newspaper editor. "An Editor for Oregon: Charles A. Sprague and the Politics of Change" was published in 1998 by the OSU Press.

After Gov. McCall finished his second term of office in 1975, he came to OSU and taught political science and journalism before returning to Portland as a commentator for KATU-TV. In 1982, the OSU College of Liberal Arts created the lectureship to honor McCall's legacy and to bring to campus notable people in journalism and political science.