Join the audience for conversation with former CEO of the Los Angeles Times and CNN Tom Johnson and Red and Black Executive Director Charlotte Varnum, as they discuss Johnson’s new book Driven: A Life in Public Service and Journalism from LBJ to CNN. The talk will begin with an introduction from University Librarian and Associate Provost Dr. Toby Graham at 4 p.m. A reception and a book signing with Johnson will follow the discussion. 

Driven brings a seasoned perspective to today’s conversations about government, media, and the future of truth in the form of a deeply personal and long-awaited autobiography by Tom Johnson, an award-winning journalist who helped shape the twenty-four-hour news media as we know it. Johnson’s storied career in public service and journalism that began as a reporter at the Macon Telegraph in Georgia spans the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, where he was eyewitness to painful negotiations on Vietnam and notified the president that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated, through the executive leadership of the LA Times and, finally, Ted Turner’s upstart CNN in Atlanta. 

From his perspective “inside the room,” Johnson provides eyewitness accounts of LBJ’s triumphs and failings as well as an on-the-ground view of the magnificent achievements and significant shortfalls of late twentieth-century American journalism. Johnson is also candid about his lifelong struggle with depression and has actively worked in retirement as a leader in mental health, cancer research, Alzheimer’s, and addiction treatment and recovery. With more than eight decades behind him, Driven is not just Johnson’s look at the past but a chance for his story to offer guidance about finding balance in an uncertain future. 

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Georgia Press, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Willson Center for Humanities & Arts, the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, and The Red and Black. 

This event is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Hull Street Deck directly across from the Special Collections Libraries building. Requests for accommodations should be made as soon as possible prior to the scheduled event. For further information regarding this event or to submit accessibility requests for it, please contact Candice Lawrence at Candice.Lawrence@uga.edu.

This lecture is part of the University's 2025 Fall Signature Lecture Series.