3/1/06

TO:  Journalism students
FROM:  Richard Campbell, Director, Journalism Program
RE:  Dayton Codebreakers documentary

I'd like to extend an invitation to all of you to attend the special 
screening and panel discussion of DAYTON CODEBREAKERS on Monday, March 6, 
at 4 p.m. in Shideler Hall 115.  This documentary is set to air on more 
than 220 PBS stations in April.

For the Journalism Program here, this work represents a journalistic model 
for how to do visually historical, in-depth reporting about complex topics. 
The documentary tells the WWII story of the Navy, desperate to break the 
German Enigma codes and save American lives and boats, going to to National 
Cash Register Co. in Dayton, Ohio, in search of a codebreaker. There they 
found Joseph Desch, an NCR engineer of German descent, who died in 1987 
without revealing his central role in cracking the German (and later 
Japanese) code during this top-secret military mission.

Joe Desch's daughter, Deborah Anderson, co-produced the project with 
director Aileen LeBlanc, who tells Desch's story.   Desch secretly received 
the nation's Medal of Merit from President Harry Truman in 1947.

LeBlanc is a Yellow Springs journalist whose work in TV and public radio 
has earned more than 40 regional and national awards. For more than 20 
years, she has worked for ABC and CBS affiliates in local television and 
for National Public Radio affiliates.  She also is former news director at 
WYSO.

Following the screening, LeBlanc and Anderson will join a panel to discuss 
Codebreakers. Allan Winkler, distinguished professor in Miami's History 
department and author of Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the 
Atom and FDR and the Making of Modern America, will moderate. Other panel 
members include Jim Tobin, the current Wiepking Distinguished Professor and 
author of To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for 
Flight, and W.J. (Bo) Brinkman from Miami's Computer Science and Systems 
Analysis Department, who does work on algorithms and the math underlying 
cryptographic protocols.

Thank you.