We came up with the idea of having a regular panel of Central New York academicians. I came up with the name, I came up the idea of giving A’s and F’s at the end of each show. I came up with the theme song, which is the “Boys from Syracuse.” And we went on the air, debuted at 11 p.m. on Friday night. Not your best time slot, but it caught on pretty quickly, and Michael moved the show to 8 p.m. Fridays, which is a good time slot, right before McLaughlin. The other shows that he started rather soon went away because for those shows to work you have to have both a moderator and a panel and understand television that create that atmosphere that people let you into their home via the television set. We had to understand this is not an academic show aimed at an academic audience. I got lucky. I got a panel of people who get that and have become television stars in the community. They are all well-recognized as the Ivory Tower group. I continued doing it for the past 14 ½ years. I did it because it was a. a lot of fun; b. because we got to say some very blunt things on television, which you simply do not hear on the commercial stations, and we had a chance to move the needle in town on local issues and statewide issues. But it was a lot of fun, and I’m going to miss it. Q: Back to your tenure as dean. You were dean from 1990 to 2008 — years that saw a lot of changes in the media. What do you see as some of the major changes in media? What are you most optimistic about with these changes? What concerns you most about these changes as we head into the future? A: I’m highly pessimistic. I’m frightened. You can trace it all to two things. One is the disruption created by the digital environment, and how this has affected the business model for newspapers, for serious public affairs magazines, and for the way in which television news goes about its business, and the impact of its business model also in relation to the economic collapse in 2008 tied to the mortgage crisis. This was a perfect storm. The two of them coming together and they decimated the business models for serious journalism. It’s had an effect in Syracuse and all around the 24
55 PLUS - February 2017 / March 2017
country with daily newspapers and cutbacks in the newsroom, cutbacks in investigative reporting, cutbacks in staffing in the beat system. It’s had an effect even up to the New York Times, which has had cuts. Everybody is still struggling with how to deal with the movement of information off the printed page and online and how to pay for that, and how to get advertising to support, how to get people to subscribe to it online. So we’re in the middle of this revolution. The industry is economically shaky, and this comes at a time when we have a president-elect who cares little and knows nothing about First Amendment freedom and the importance of media in a democracy. If ever there was an administration that’s going to require very close reportage it is the Trump Administration, and he’s coming in at a time when the press doesn’t have the resources I wish it had to do that. So I’m very worried about what he means for the future of the free press of the United States, and therefore the future of democracy, since there is no such thing as democracy without a free and vigorous press. Q: You’re a Cleveland, Ohio, native, but you immersed yourself in the Syracuse community over the past 25 years or so. You were involved in the local arts community. What motivated you to become so involved in the local community? A: I really had two levels of involvement. One was in the arts community because I think if Syracuse is ever going to pull itself out of the doldrums, it has to attract more people. We don’t have enough people in Syracuse. And we don’t have enough people because people don’t want to move there. There’s a lot of reasons they don’t want to move there and one of them is that there isn’t enough to do. If you don’t have a strong cultural presence, and by that I mean, museums, music and dance and everything else, you’re not going to get people moving there. And if that happens, businesses are not going to want to set up there, there isn’t a good pool of people to hire and the whole area will remain stagnant. And what we will become — and this is a phrase I’ve used before — Amsterdam, New York with the Carrier Dome. And
there’s no future in that for Syracuse University. The university itself has to have a vibrant community around it, or students won’t want to come there. To her credit, [former S.U. president] Nancy Cantor recognized this, and her major achievement was town-gown relationships, attempting to use the university’s resources to promote the city. She went about it in a way I would not have gone about it, but I think her instinct there was right. So I got involved in the cultural community as a member of boards, giving money, advice, writing about the arts because I love the arts and because I believe Syracuse needs the arts in order to survive. On the political front, I used my column at The Post-Standard for lots of different things, but one of them was writing about a lot of local issues because the community doesn’t talk to itself very well and it doesn’t want to face the reality of why things don’t get done in Syracuse. And they don’t. The city changed remarkably little in the 26 years that I lived there. And I felt that the platform that The Post-Standard graciously gave me as a community columnist, I was going to try to, quote the phrase, “print the news and raise hell” and point out where I thought local leaders, Albany leaders were holding the city back, in hopes of sparking a community conversation and creating change. And I did that for two reasons: I live in Syracuse; I wanted to live in a city that was a better city than it is, and I recognized that the Newhouse school won’t be strong if the city around it is crumbling, so I got involved. That’s what citizens should do. Q: With the past election being what it was, what do you think the media’s responsibilities are for the future? A: I don’t think the responsibilities are any different than for any other administration. And that is to hold them accountable; to provide a marketplace of ideas about what the administration is achieving and not achieving; follow up on the promises that have been made; to make sure that what Trump says are his accomplishments are, in fact, accomplishments or whether he’s bending the truth as he wont to do; to follow very closely what’s