Youngstown Press Club Annual Dinner

youngstow Carmen Gentile, founder of Postindustrial, an independent, Pittsburgh-based multimedia outlet, will speak at the 5:30pm event in the Anne Christman Memorial Hall at Stambaugh Auditorium. Gentile’s topic will be: “From the battlefield to post-industrial America: How one reporter roamed the world before returning home to create his own outlet.”

Gentile covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and various other conflicts for outlets, including USA Today, Esquire and CBS News. In September 2010, while embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, he was shot in the head with a rocket-propelled grenade. Although the grenade did not detonate, it blinded him in his right eye and crushed part of his skull. Gentile wrote a book titled: “Blindsided by the Taliban” – a memoir documenting his life as a war correspondent and including a dark-humored retelling of the story of his unusual injury. He received the Galloway Award for a story in Salon that was excerpted from that memoir. The award is named for Joseph Galloway, a UPI combat correspondent and McClatchy Newspapers columnist. In 2018, Gentile founded Postindustrial, which covers the Rust Belt, Appalachia and other post-industrial communities around the world. Postindustrial focuses on regions that were once heavily industrialized and efforts to reimagine them for a new era. Born in New Kensington, Pa., Gentile graduated from Villanova University with a degree in philosophy and Islamic studies.

Reservations for the event may be made through youngstownpressclub.com. The cost is $50 and the registration deadline is April 10. The program is part of the club’s Edward M. Barr Speaker Series. The Youngstown Press Club was re-established in 2018 to promote journalism and related professions in the Mahoning Valley. A portion of proceeds from all YPC events goes to the Youngstown Press Club Scholarship Fund.