Alumni Magazine: Issue 2 | 2014-2015

MEEK SCHOOL A MAGAZINE ON JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA

ISSUE 2 • 2014-2015

Magazine Service Journalism

30

CELEBRATING

YEARS

SAMIR HUSNI Mr. Magazine™

OVERBY ON

Kennedy & THE Media plus

The Evolution Of JOURNALISM

& THE FIRST AMENDMENT IN 2014

Chancellor Dan Jones with John and Mary Thomas

A BIG THANKS

A new and forward-looking degree at the University of Mississippi will have an endowed chair, thanks to a forward-looking alumnus and his spouse who want others to experience the same inspired boost to their careers as he did.

“This gift is about helping Ole Miss students by investing in the best and brightest professors, those who will ensure the legacy of this great school is passed on through the generation of our children and their children after that,” said John B. Thomas, who with his wife, Mary, created the John and Mary Thomas Chair in Integrated Marketing Communications in the Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

The Thomas family gift is part of the Barnard Initiative, a faculty support campaign named for Frederick A.P. Barnard, UM chancellor from 1856 to 1861 and later chancellor at Columbia University. The Thomases’ gift will be partially matched by Abbott Laboratories for a total $1.5 million contribution. Annual income from the endowment will enhance the compensation of a leading IMC faculty member in perpetuity.

A 1985 UM graduate, John Thomas recently retired from Abbott Laboratories, where he was vice president for investor relations and public affairs, as well as president of the Abbott Fund, which provides grants to promote science, expand access to health care and strengthen communities globally. The Thomases live in Glenview, Illinois, with their two daughters and son.

“John was an exceptional student,” said Will Norton, dean of the journalism school. “His integrity and transparency were matched by intellectual depth and rich spiritual insight. To me, this is the reason for his uncommon stewardship.

Gratitude, whether based on reality or not, is a quality of a person’s character. John exemplifies character and integrity in everything he does. I am so delighted to have known him as a student and now as an alumnus with a wonderful family.”

UM Chancellor Dan Jones applauds the Thomases for their vision and generosity.

“John Thomas is an Ole Miss graduate who pursued exceptional opportunities and achieved remarkable professional and personal success,” Jones said. “We are deeply grateful that through his journey, he never forgot his alma mater and the generations of students who will follow in his footsteps. John and Mary have chosen to make significant investments in an academic discipline and a university they love. The results will come as outstanding faculty members teach and mentor our students, preparing them to perform in an ever-changing global community.”

Integrated marketing communications, or IMC, takes a holistic approach, recognizing that each contact a consumer has with a product or service, intended or incidental, has an influence in forming consumer opinion. The degree in the Meek School was approved by the Board of Trustees of State Institutions of Higher Learning in late 2010 and was first offered to students in 2011. It has more than 500 undergraduate majors, making it the fastest growing degree program on campus and perhaps in UM history.

Norton and faculty of the Meek School designed the degree to which the Thomases and other alumni and friends have responded with much enthusiasm.

“The spectacular growth and popularity of the IMC program in the Meek School speaks to the hard work that Dr. Norton and others have put into ensuring that Ole Miss remains one of the premier schools in the country for journalism and communications students,” Thomas said.

The faculty endowment follows two previous initiatives supported by the Thomases. A 2013 gift endowed the Thomas Family Speaker Series to help underwrite the cost of bringing leading specialists for campus visits. In 2011, the couple funded the Thomas Family Scholarship Endowment, which will assist its first student with tuition and expenses during the 2014-15 academic year.

“Mary and I consider our gifts an investment in the future of Ole Miss and the Meek School,” Thomas said. “We both strongly believe in the merits of a rigorous education in journalism – both traditional reporting and writing as well as in-depth studies in the new media that are reshaping the way people communicate.”

Mary Thomas, who also had a career in professional communications, said the whole family is happy about the gift.

“It has been great for us to see how important the university is for John,” she said. “He’s a testament to what Ole Miss can do for young people. It makes us feel good to be part of it.”

Gifts of all sizes are strengthening faculty support at Ole Miss. Individuals and organizations interested in providing a gift of any size to support faculty can send a check with the Barnard Initiative and academic area noted in the memo line to the University of Mississippi Foundation, P.O. Box 249, University, MS 38677; call the Office of University Development at 662-915-3937; or visit online at http://www. umfoundation.com/makeagift.

MEEK SCHOOL A MAGAZINE ON JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA

ISSUE 2 • 2014-2015

Publisher WILL NORTON, JR. Editor EVANGELINE W. ROBINSON

Copy Editor RANDALL HALEY

Art Director Presentation Director VIRGINIA ENGLAND DARREN SANEFSKI Contributors CHARLIE ADAMS • RONNIE AGNEW ALISON BARTEL • TAYLOR BENNETT MICKEY BRAZEAL • TAYLOR DELANDRO JONECE DUNIGAN • SCOTT FIENE LEAH GIBSON • MIKKI HARRIS ALEX EDWARDS • LOGAN KIRKLAND JAMES LUMPP • JOSH MCCOY MAGGIE MCDANIEL • AUSTIN MILLER HANK PRICE • CHARLES L. OVERBY

CHARLES D. MITCHELL • GENE POLICINSKI BRIDGET QUINN • SARAH BRACY PENN HAYLEY RAMAGOS • RYAN RIGNEY SAMANTHA RIPPON • ANGELA ROGALSKI BILL ROSE • KAYLEIGH SKINNER CLANCY SMITH • MICKEY SMITH ALYSIA STEELE • MADISEN THEOBALD, JENNIFER THURMAN • MICHAEL TONOS DEB WENGER • KATIE WILLIAMSON

Cover photo by: TIMOTHY IVY Meek School is published by The University of Mississippi Meek School of Journalism and New Media, 114 Farley Hall, University, MS 38677.

Articles and opinions expressed in Meek School are those of the authors and do not represent the views of The University of Mississippi or the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reprinted in any manner without the written permission of the publisher.

On the cover: Samir Husni

MEEK SCHOOL 1

CONTENTS

26

LETTER FROM THE DEAN.............................3 MAGAZINE SERVICE JOURNALISM 30TH ANNIVERSARY................................................................4 JAMES AUTRY........................................................6 SAMIR HUSNI...........................................................8 RONALD T. FARRAR.........................................12

8

MICKEY BRAZEALE..........................................14 THE REPORT ON THE STATUS OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.....................16 OVERBY ON KENNEDY AND THE MEDIA................................................19 PHOTOS BY STEELE........................................22 PHOTOS BY HARRIS........................................24 PHOTOS BY JOSH MCCOY.......................26 POSITIVE THINKING.......................................28

40

26 75

HOW IN THE WORLD DID WE FORGET THE DELTA?..........................30 THE HEARST FOUNDATION.....................32 PAUL KEANE........................................................ 34 THE EVOLUTION OF JOURNALISM..............................................36 THE MISSISSIPPI PRESS ASSOCIATION................................... 38 HOW FIBBER MAGEE & MOLLY WON WWII.....................................40 RANDALL PINKSTON.....................................42 THE STUDENT MEDIA CENTER SINCE 2009................................... 44 THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM............ 46 GRADUATE PROFILES.................................. 48 STUDENT PROFILES.......................................72 STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHY...................... 74 FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS.................................76

2 MEEK SCHOOL

LETTER FROM WILL NORTON, JR. This summer Dr. Ed Meek, Charles Overby and I have had several conversations with Andy Lack, chairman of the Bloomberg Media Group.

On several of those occasions, Dr. Meek has told Andy that the reason the University of Mississippi produced so many elite journalists is that journalism classes, while dealing with theoretical issues, always focused on assignments that required the development of journalistic expertise.

From the beginning, the Department of Journalism was closely aligned with The Daily Mississippian. Faculty members taught classes and then spent hours with students outside of class, working with them to improve their reporting and writing, photography and video work.

Clearly, the outstanding journalism programs in the nation have been those programs that provide students with a high level of abstraction in classroom lectures and with significant opportunities to apply those abstractions in specific assignments.

Curriculum makes a huge difference in defining the quality of a program. This is our emphasis when we speak to prospective students and their parents when they come to campus. We have been fortunate that this message strikes a chord with so many of them.

Students also look at a faculty when they are deciding where to go to school, and the Meek School has a faculty with significant media experience — some with experience before social media and some with experience in social media. A solid mix of faculty with doctorates and those without doctorates brings a richness in diversity.

Finally, every quality school has outstanding facilities and an engaged and caring alumni.

Five elements are necessary for a school to be good: quality faculty, good students, an up-to-date curriculum, outstanding facilities and exceptional alumni. These elements are at play in the Meek School. As a result, since 2005 the number of majors in the Meek

School has increased from about 500 majors to about 1,044 majors.

During the first year of the Meek School, 81 new undergrads enrolled. In Fall 2014, 158 enrolled. Moreover, the number of majors who also are majoring in the Honors College has increased from 26 in 2009 to 56 in 2014.

At the same time, the number of graduate students has increased from 15 (four full time and 11 part time) in 2009 to 30 admitted for the 2014-15 academic year, with 21 returning for the second year — 51 in total.

We are grateful that the growth in numbers has been accompanied by improved quality of the student body. The undergraduate retention rate from freshman to sophomore year was 81.5 percent in 2009. Today it is 93.4 percent.

Clearly, the characteristics of a quality program in media are evident in the Meek School, and you will read about them in this second issue of the Meek School.

Janet Worthington has written a personal essay on her father, Dr. Ronald T. Farrar, the chair of the Department of Journalism who guided the unit to accreditation and then left to be director of the School of Journalism at the University of Kentucky. Janet and her brother, Bradley, lived in Oxford four years when their dad was the chair of the department (1973-77).

You will learn about the establishment of the Service Journalism magazine program 30 years ago when Jim Autry supported creation of a magazine program that focused on magazines that helped readers do things. You will read of alumni’s enthusiastic endorsements of the program that Dr. Samir Husni has led since 1984.

You will learn more about Dr. Jeanni Atkins, a senior faculty member who has run the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information and who has been the intellectual anchor of the faculty since the mid-1980s.

I am sure you will enjoy these and other stories.

MEEK SCHOOL 3

30th

Anniversary of the

MAGAZINE

SERVICE JOURNALISM

PROGRAM

T

By Angela Rogalski

he Meredith Corporation and Jim Autry: two names that are synonymous with the magazine service journalism program that began in August 1984 at the University of Mississippi and is still going strong today.

Autry was president of the magazine publishing group at Meredith and had a strong belief in the word “service” when it came to journalism.

“For most of my career in journalism, the categories of journalism were: news, sports, news features, business, and ‘the women’s pages.’ A separate category was editorials and commentary,” Autry said. “But most of my career was spent as an editor with Better Homes and Gardens, published by the Meredith Corp., which also published several other magazines, all of which addressed subjects focused on home and family--with one exception, Successful Farming, which was technically a business magazine.”

Since service was an important part of journalism to Autry and not just the news element of publishing, he began to question the status quo of the publishing pyramid.

“So where did I and my colleagues in the general category of home and family magazines fit into all this? To begin, most of the news journalists, and journalism educators, were fairly dismissive of what was generally referred to as the ‘women’s magazines,’ even though that was a highly inaccurate term,”

4 MEEK SCHOOL

Autry said. “It included all the home service material, food, and fashion. To be blunt, my kind of magazine was not taken very seriously in the big-time New York publishing world, even though as a group the Meredith and other publishers’ magazines were very profitable.”

Better Homes and Gardens seemed to be an odd-man-out type of publication when it came to the publishing world at large.

“It seemed to me that part of the problem was vocabulary,” Autry said. “The magazine world didn’t really know how to refer to a home and family magazine like Better Homes and Gardens, so it was shuffled into the ‘women’s magazine’ mix. While the journalism world seemed not to take us seriously, we as editors and publishers took our work very seriously indeed. We were passionate about serving our reader with ideas, inspiration, and information for creating the physical and emotional environment for a better home and family life. The operative phrase was ‘serving our readers,’ always.”

And that’s when service really came into play.

“As I was thinking through the concept of service journalism, I surveyed a large group of magazines and discovered that the great majority of their pages were devoted to ‘service’ subjects, not to news,” Autry said. “I did not coin the term, ‘service journalism,’ but I resolved to elevate it as a category and bring it into the mainstream of journalism thinking. Where to do that? I figured that, like any other professional discipline, the legitimization of ‘ser-

vice journalism’ required some connection with, and endorsement by, people in the academy, i.e., journalism educators.”

And that’s when Autry decided to investigate giving the term “service journalism” more accreditation.

“I think, given that challenge, most people would have turned to Missouri, Columbia, or Northwestern, but I just didn’t believe they would pay attention, so I turned to the University of Mississippi, my alma mater,” Autry said. “My friend Will Norton not only paid attention, he was very receptive. I think he saw this as yet another opportunity to focus attention on the program at Ole Miss.”

It wasn’t long until the dream became a reality, thanks to Autry’s firm belief that service journalism was and is an important part of the world of journalism and to Meredith Corp.’s support and reciprocal faith and trust.

“I found a little money, got the buy-in from CEO Robert Burnett, and the process began,” Autry said. “I am uncertain, after all these years, of the specific timing, but Will was able to find Samir Husni who was, and is, as passionate about magazines as I am. I tried to make sure Meredith stayed involved with internships and so on, and Will brought students on visits to the company in Des Moines. And when I retired, Meredith funded a modest scholarship program in my honor. The rest, as they say, is history.”

The magazine service journalism program has morphed into a force to be reckoned with in the world of journalism education and preparation today.

Dr. Samir Husni has led the program from the beginning and has been the passionate glue that has held it together and propelled the program into the 21st century.

Jim Autry is thankful to all involved and feels a compelling and continuing pride in the program today.

“I don’t have the vocabulary to describe how proud I am of having had some part in the development of the Ole Miss program,” Autry said, “and how proud I am that Old Miss took the lead in bringing service journalism into the mainstream. And it makes my chest swell up at what Charles Overby and Ed Meek have done for Ole Miss Journalism. I am sure they would agree that the greatest reward is in having done something for which you will be thanked by people who have not even been born yet.”

As a member of the executive team from Meredith that helped execute the program, Rich Krumme remembered those early days at the company before the term “service journalism” had been born.

“At the time we at Meredith were looking for ways to explain ‘our’ kind of journalism, which was straightforward, useful and probably not very exciting to student journalists,” Krumme said. “The term ‘service journalism’ also became a market differentiator when explaining our magazines to advertisers.

Of course Meredith was not the only company using the concept, we just named it. Much like ‘Crest gets teeth whiter.’ If you name it you own it.”

Krumme recalled another concern at the time was the dearth of new writers trained in explanatory writing.

“This, after all, was the time of investigative reporting a la Woodward and Bernstein,” Krumme said. “Who wanted to write about decorating your bathroom when you could expose presidential wrongdoing? Interestingly, the service journalism concept has found a new home in the digital era. We can overhaul a lawn mower or make dinner by watching a YouTube video.”

At the time Krumme was editor of Successful Farming magazine, where legend had it that the all-time most-read article was “How to sharpen a hoe.”

“I was the first person in the magazine writing class at the University of Missouri to sell a freelance article. It was ‘How to buy a used car.’ The check

was for $75 and the year 1961. Service journalism for sure.”

Also on the scene in 1984 was a young professor from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Dr. Samir Husni. Husni helped bring the program to fruition and has been there since the beginning. Under his leadership and guidance, the magazine service journalism program has progressed and became one of the top journalism curriculums in the country.

“The beginnings of the magazine service journalism program started on a two-road highway intersecting in Des Moines, Iowa,” Husni said. “On one side of the Mississippi, Dean Will Norton, then chairman of the department of journalism at Ole Miss, began planning for a grant from the Meredith Corp., where Ole Miss alum James Autry was the president of the magazine publishing group at Meredith. On the other side of the Mississippi, a young Ph.D. in magazine journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s School of Journalism was looking for a teaching job.”

At that time, Husni ended up interviewing for a job at Drake University in Des Moines. Drake was hoping to get money from Meredith for its magazine program, so whomever they interviewed they took to Meredith to meet with the senior executives and public relations people.

“Ken McDougall was Meredith’s community public relations manager,” Husni said. “He met with me and took me around the company meeting different executives, including James Autry. At the end of the Meredith tour McDougall told me, ‘I have never met a person that knew more about the magazine business than you do.’ Needless to say I thought that McDougall was just being kind.”

Husni said that weeks later, after he returned from his part-time teaching job at Mizzou, his wife, Marie, told him that a person by the name of Will Norton had been calling asking about him because they had a job opening at Ole Miss.

“Well, Norton’s road and my road intersected at Meredith,” Husni said.

“Meredith wanted to start the first national service magazine program in the country and told Norton about this young graduate from Missouri. I was invited for an interview at Ole Miss on May 4, 1984, and the rest is history.”

An executive team from Meredith including Bob Burnett, the CEO back then, James Autry, Richard Krumme, Leo Aramtis, director of public relations, and Ken McDougall flew to Oxford and with Chancellor Gerald Turner and Chairman Will Norton announced in Farley Auditorium the start of the first magazine service journalism program in the nation at Ole Miss. Husni was in attendance and Chancellor Turner introduced him to the audience.

The wheels were set in motion for the program to start in August and with such a short time left to prepare, Norton started to work on recruiting students for this new journalism program and Husni started to prepare the program and the courses needed for it.

“During the first year, I asked Meredith for an additional grant to publish my research in a book,” Husni said. “And the first edition of ‘Samir Husni’s Guide to New Magazines’ was born and the book, and thus the program, was in every media-related publication and in major newspapers across the country. Meredith mailed the book to all the magazine companies together with information about the program. It was a match made in heaven.”

The author is a 2012 Meek School graduate. She is administrative assistant to Dr. Samir Husni in the Magazine Innovation Center at the Meek School, writes for the Delta Business Journal and freelances for numerous publications.

MEEK SCHOOL 5

James Autry

W

By Sarah Bracy Penn

hen he rolled into Oxford, Mississippi, on a motorcycle, he had only $50 and a band scholarship to his name.

Now, he’s a former Fortune 500 executive, the author of 12 books and has been dubbed one of the most successful and respected publishing executives in the nation for his work at the Meredith Corp.

Because of his leadership at Meredith and in the magazine industry, he encouraged and supported the development of the magazine program at Ole Miss.

In 1951 James A. Autry, a freshman journalism major, was an area correspondent for the The Commercial-Appeal. He buzzed around Oxford, stringing stories for the Memphis paper and the AP wire while advancing in the ranks of the Pride of the South marching band.

“Someone asked me, ‘Why’d you move from clarinet player to drum major?’ And I said, ‘As a drum major, I got paid,’” he said.

For Autry, Ole Miss wasn’t too far from family and the university had awarded him the largest band scholarship of all of the schools to which he applied.

As it turns out, Autry had more than that area correspondent gig and a flair for the clarinet — he had ambition.

Autry’s fellow students saw it in him before he even saw it in himself. His determination impressed Daily Mississippian editors Paul Pittman and Liz Shiver greatly.

“Jim was lively and extremely dependable in getting work done,” Shiver said. “He had all the characteristics you’d look for, but that the majority students don’t offer.”

Shiver, who was the first female editor of the paper, remembers having to beg Autry to join the staff.

“He was such a quick study,” Shiver said. “He was fast on his feet, clever and funny to be around.” He initially turned down the news editor position Shiver offered him. Still, Autry did not realize his talents.

“In hindsight, he later saw my seeing all that promise in him as the

6 MEEK SCHOOL

reason he took the job,” Shiver said.

From 1951to 1955, when he served on the paper’s staff, most of the students saw what was ahead if Mississippi’s division in race was not solved. Many Mississippian staffers supported integration and were challenged by Pittman to join the National Student Association, an organization that sought to organize college students to give them a voice. Despite the stakes, Autry joined.

He also covered a conflict between the Mississippi Trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning and the university after the trustees rejected a program on campus because of the keynote speaker’s political views. When the story ran with his byline, a Mississippi legislator denounced him on the floor of the legislature.

After serving as managing editor under Shiver and being elected by the student body as editor-in-chief of the Mississippian in 1954, Autry graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism in 1955.

“My total ambition was to be a newspaper man and make $50 a week,” Autry said. But before he could pursue that dream, Autry entered the U.S. Air Force in 1955 and served as a tactical jet fighter pilot in Europe during the Cold War. When he was released from active duty in 1959, Autry began to pursue his career in publishing.

“I knew journalism was in my blood,” Autry said.

While it was an easy time to be a white journalist in the South, it proved a much tougher atmosphere for a Southerner in the Northeast and Midwest. Still, Autry pressed on. After a brief stint at the Courier Chronicle in Humboldt, Tennessee, he was offered the position that would become the gateway to his career.

He made an inquiry at the Meredith Corp. headquarters in Des Moines, Iowa, the same day that a copy editor at Better Homes and Gardens had quit. Call it fate or happenstance, his decision to take the job opened a whole new world.

“I thought, by God, I’ve made it,” Autry said of his time at the magazine. Meanwhile, back in Oxford, Autry’s legacy lived on in the growing journalism department.

Ed Meek is a 1961 graduate of Ole Miss and the namesake of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. Meek remembers when his professors would talk about Autry.

“Our professors always used him as examples of ‘who you could become’ in their lectures,” Meek said. “I just remember how extraordinarily impressed we all were.”

When Meek met him for the first time, Autry had been invited back to the university to share his story with current students. Meek was impressed by Autry’s achievements, but what really captivated the young journalist was Autry’s charisma and character.

“The ’60s were a time when John F. Kennedy was who everyone looked up to for inspiration,” said Meek, a former assistant vice chancellor for public relations and marketing at the university. “Jim Autry was my JFK.” Today, Autry still serves as Meek’s motivation. More than 50 years after their introduction, the two still get together to share stories over eggs and sausage at The Beacon in Oxford. Meek said he owes a lot of

his personal success to the advice Autry has shared over the years.

Autry has a constant desire to help others, and it proved instrumental in fostering his success at Meredith, Meek said.

“His motivational passion is what moved his career forward at Meredith,” Meek said. “With his leadership skills, he developed a vision for magazines.”

Meredith saw its greatest expansion under Autry’s leadership, during which he served as editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens, and later as president of the Meredith Magazine Group and senior vice president of the corporation.

During his years leading Meredith’s magazine group, the corporation acquired four television news stations and Ladies’ Home Journal, launched Midwest Living and Wood magazines and saw Traditional Home evolve into a subscription magazine, among many other expansions.

In 1984, after several years of conversations about the need for a service journalism program at a journalism school, Autry encouraged Will Norton to ask the Meredith Corp. to fund a magazine program at Ole Miss.

Norton made a proposal to Bob Burnett, president and CEO of Meredith, and Autry enthusiastically endorsed the request. Meredith funded a five-year program that enabled the department to hire Dr. Samir Husni as its leader.

Once the program had momentum, Meredith made a generous donation of $150,000 to support it continuation, and under the leadership of Husni the program has gained worldwide acclaim.

“Jim Autry is one of those rare magazine executives who rose to the top from the editorial side of the business,” Husni said. “Like Henry Luce and DeWitt Wallace in the ‘20s of the last century, Autry ascended to the position of president of the publishing division at Meredith from the editorial side of industry. He was, is and continues to be a journalist first.

“No one before him or after him who assumed the job of president of the publishing division at the Meredith Corp. came from the editorial side. Jim Autry is one of a kind and I am proud to count him as my very first mentor from the magazine industry.”

Autry and his wife, former lieutenant governor of Iowa Sally Pederson, have become leaders in the promotion of autism awareness. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to serve on the national advisory committee for the White House Conference on Families.

He was inducted to the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame in 1981, among countless other awards.

For Autry, devotion and persistence are crucial to ensure ultimate success.

“Whatever you set yourself to do,” Autry said, “put all your values and all your focus to it and do it. Then move on to the next thing.”

The author is a senior, print journalism and English double major from Shreveport, Louisiana.

Photo by Timothy Ivy

SAMIR HUSNI Mr. Magazineâ„¢

8 MEEK SCHOOL

I

By Angela Rogalski

t’s been said that until the magazine service journalism program began in August 1984, Mississippi was not the first state one thought of when it came to magazine publishing.

Music maybe and great literature, but not necessarily the world of magazines and how they’re made. But that changed after Dr. Samir Husni started the magazine service journalism program at the University of Mississippi.

Steve Cohn, editor-in-chief of Media Industry Newsletter, described Husni as “a wonderful representative for the state of Mississippi, especially where magazine journalism is concerned.”

“In fact, in New York and all over America,” Cohn said, “when you hear the word Mississippi today, magazines are the first thing that comes to mind. And it’s because of Dr. Husni’s passion.”

The magazine service journalism program at Ole Miss is celebrating 30 years.

“When Jim Autry and the Meredith Corp. funded the magazine program at Ole Miss, it brought a great deal of media attention to the department of journalism and the University of Mississippi,” said Will Norton, Jr., dean of the Meek School.

Since the inception of the program Husni has been asked to deliver seminars or consult with magazines and magazine media companies on every populated continent of the world.

Many years ago one of his students gave him the moniker “Mr. Magazine™.” Today he is considered the leading expert on magazines and magazine media publishing.

Tony Silber, vice president/Content of Folio: Min, Expo, Audience Development, and PR News at Access Intelligence, said, “Samir Husni is a magazine-industry treasure.

“He has built a business as a consultant through his extraordinary intellect and understanding of how magazine-companies work.

“But he’s far more than just that: he’s an icon. He’s a brand. He’s an evangelist for print media who understands the interplay of print and digital media.

“The magazine industry is more successful because of Samir Husni’s work, and the good news is that he’s imparting his knowledge not just to his peers, but also to the next generation of media specialists, through his work at the University of Mississippi.”

The funding and the idea were the first steps. After Husni was hired to head the program, it was time to get down to details.

“With the help of a lot of people from the Meredith Corp. we developed five courses, and we began to offer the program,” Husni said.

Students needed “to know more than just your basic reporting, writing, editing and designing,” Husni said. That was uncommon

for the 1980s. Ole Miss was the first school to include journalism and the business side of magazines in one program.

Husni developed editing by design, a course that provided everything a journalist should know about design and what every designer should know about journalism. Students in the department of art as well as students in the service journalism program took the course.

“Then we created a sequence of two courses,” Husni said, “in which students developed an idea from scratch for a new magazine and they created an entire business plan for that magazine, including developing content, design and the budget.

“Along with everything else that goes with a magazine: the media kit, the circulation plan and the advertising plan.”

The program has seen a lot of graduates who have gone on to establish impressive careers and they give Husni and the magazine service journalism program all of the credit.

Newell Turner, one of Husni’s former students, is now editorial director for Hearst Design Group, specifically Elle Décor, House Beautiful and Veranda.

“After I graduated with my undergraduate degree in journalism and Southern studies,” Turner said, “I went to work for a while. I came back to Ole Miss to go to law school and did it for about a year and a half.

“Then I found out this magazine program was launching in the journalism school and I’ve had a passion for magazines that goes back to when I was an early teen.

“So I switched from law to the magazine service journalism program, and it was like a light came on because suddenly I knew what I wanted to do with my career.”

Turner said magazine design wound up opening up a door for him in his career.

“That first year,” he said, “I met Dorothy Kalins, then editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Home and also that year she was president of ASME. “She spoke at Journalism Week in the spring, and Samir found out that there was a job opening, and he encouraged me to look in to it and help me realize what a great opportunity it was.

“So I pursued it and interviewed for the job, and they hired me.

“Without Dr. Husni and the magazine service journalism program, who knows where I’d be.”

Clinton Smith, editor-in-chief of Veranda magazine and a former student of Husni and the magazine service journalism program, said the program always has been unique, and that’s why it has worked.

“The foundation of his coursework has served as my compass throughout my 15-year journalism career — from intern to assistant editor to editor in chief,” Smith said.

MEEK SCHOOL 9

“Dr. Husni’s magazine program has never been about textbook learning,” he said, “and that’s why it’s had such an impact on students’ lives over the past 30 years. The practical, real-world experience he instills will serve them throughout their careers.

“Dr. Husni’s magazine program has signaled to the country — and the world—that important and innovative things are happening not only at Ole Miss, but in Mississippi. His influence, and the power of the program cannot be underestimated.”

The magazine service journalism program has begun many careers for students and will continue to do so in the future.

Scott Jones was executive editor of Southern Living magazine from 1999 to 2010. Then he left to start his own companies, called Jones is Hungry and Jones is Thirsty, two separate entities on culinary-related custom content, education and consulting.

“I went to Ole Miss specifically for the magazine program,” Jones said. “The service journalism program and Dr. Husni.

This was in 1988 and desktop publishing was really in its infancy. So it was an exciting time to be there because the whole world of magazine publishing was changing, and you could do things then right on your own PC which before would have taken a lot of capital and a huge staff.

“The program had terrific benefits for me. It opened doors and got me up close and personal with people I would have never been connected with if not for the program.”

Cathy Still McGowin, editor of Birmingham Home and Garden, said the university did not have a graphic design program when she got to campus.

“At the time, I majored in magazine journalism to learn the graphics programs,” she said. “Little did I realize that I would not only learn graphic design in one of the most advanced programs in the South, I also would learn everything I needed to know to gain entrance into the publishing world.

“Editing by design made the most impact on me, and the tools I learned in that class are ones I still use every day. I learned that information comes in a package — and the more the parts work together, both visually and in words, the greater the impact of the message.”

Still was hired at Southern Progress Corp. when she graduated.

“I worked at Southern Accents and later Coastal Living for 14 years,” she said. “First as a graphic artist, then as a writer, stylist, and editor. At such a large company, tasks and duties are

10 MEEK SCHOOL

specialized, and there wasn’t a lot of crossover with skill sets.

“Now, as editor of Birmingham Home and Garden, a small city magazine, the ability to use all of my skill sets are more critical than ever.

“I still maintain that Dr. Husni’s approach to looking at things from all angles is the reason I have been able to grow and meet the challenges of my career — that, and a lot of hard work.

“Those fundamentals are timeless — no matter your medium of journalism.”

Kaarre Katriina is publishing director for Women, Family and Children Media, published by Otavamedia in Finland.

“Meeting Samir in the corridor of Farley Hall in the fall of 1987 changed my career path,” Katriina said. “I came to Ole Miss originally only for one year.”

“I wanted to learn about the Southern culture and enjoy the blues archives — and take a few classes of marketing on the side.

“After meeting Samir, I quit classes at the business school and started my M.A. in journalism,” she said. “During the three-and-a-half years that I stayed at Ole Miss, I managed to visit the Center for Southern Culture only a few times.

“I’ve stayed on that path ever since, and I still love the touch and feel of a newly printed magazine.

“I still get excited when thinking about editing by design, the mission/vision of a magazine and the tone of it.”

Clearly, Dr. Husni opened doors for many students to develop exceptional careers.

“The ultimate goal,” Husni said, “was and is to teach students about service journalism, which can easily be defined as the factual, service-oriented, active-oriented, non-news type of journalism that has in it the power to activate the readers.

“The magazine service journalism program at the University of Mississippi was designed to create the type of journalism that will activate readers and get them personally involved with the content.”

And that continues today.

The author is a 2012 Meek School graduate. She is administrative assistant to Dr. Samir Husni in the Magazine Innovation Center at the Meek School, writes for the Delta Business Journal and freelances for numerous publications.

Available at The University of Mississippi Bookstore, Square Books and squarebooks.com MEEK SCHOOL 11

RONALD FARRAR

“

People love my dad. And he loves them. Dad would not do well on a deserted island. There would be nobody to talk to. No stories to tell, and no people to interview — because that’s what Dad does. He interviews. — JANET WORTHINGTON

W

By Janet Worthington ill Norton, dean of the Meek School, asked me to tell you about my dad, Ronald T. Farrar, because he thought I did a great job with my mom’s eulogy. There’s a key difference here: Dad isn’t dead! Far from it! In fact, he just got back from Hawaii, where he acquired a righteous tan that has impressed his cardiologist and horrified his dermatologist. Before that, he was in Puerto Rico; before that, Scandinavia.

My father is a newspaperman, a world-renowned expert on libel law, a graceful biographer, a heck of a teacher and, although he never really set out to be one, a miracle-working administrator. He started writing for the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway, Arkansas, while he was still in college at the University of Arkansas, and went on to work for the Arkansas Gazette, the Democrat in Trumann, Arkansas, and to contribute articles to newspapers around the country, including the Kansas City Star, Dallas Morning News, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, and numerous professional journals.

I was born when Dad was getting his doctorate in journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. His doctoral thesis became a book: Reluctant Servant: The Story of Charles G. Ross, about President Harry S Truman’s press secretary. That book, the first of eight Dad’s written so far, won the Kappa Tau Alpha Frank Luther Mott Research Award as the best scholarly book on journalism for 1969. Dad’s first faculty job was at Indiana University; my brother, Bradley, was born in Bloomington. In 1970 we moved to Dallas, Texas, where Dad was professor and chairman of the department of journalism at Southern Methodist University. He became professor and chairman of journalism at Ole Miss in 1973. His biggest goal was to get the department accredited, which he did. We moved to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1977, where Dad was professor and director of the school of journalism. At UK, Dad not only published more

12 MEEK SCHOOL

books, he took a cranky, divisive, tenured faculty and somehow made them work together.

“Dad is like Red Adair,” says Bradley Farrar, a lawyer, lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve and an excellent fiction writer.

“He would come into a place, put out fires, inspire people, get things done, and always leave it better than he found it.”

For years, Al Scroggins, dean of the college of journalism at the University of South Carolina, had been recruiting Dad to come join the faculty. In 1986, he did, becoming the Reynolds-Faunt Professor of Journalism, finally able just to teach and write. That didn’t last long. Scroggins retired, was succeeded by someone who also retired after a few years, who was succeeded by someone whose dismal people skills alienated most of the faculty. USC needed a leader, a peacemaker, someone who was not only actually liked, but beloved. They asked Dad to take over, and so Dad got back into administration, as interim dean of the college of journalism. He could have been the permanent dean, but he didn’t want to.

While he was there, he did some amazing things, including partnering with a German group, Ifra, the world’s largest association of newspaper publishers, to build the Newsplex, a $2.5-million newsroom of the future, where journalists from all over the world have come for training. Dad raised tons of money for USC. He wrote a lot, too, including another acclaimed biography, A Creed for My Profession: Walter Williams: Journalist to the World, about the founder of the school of journalism at the University of Missouri.

Bradley remembers coming to meet Dad for lunch one day and noticing a big case in the lobby with USC Journalism Faculty Publications.

“There were basically 10 things in there,” he recalls, “and nine of them were Dad’s. He was always sought after, getting job offers even after he retired. He just instantly upped the productivity and prestige, wherever he went.”

Dad retired in 2001, earlier than he probably intended to, because my mom got sick, and Dad felt like his more important job was to

take care of her, which he did for the next seven years.

When my parents were married in 1961, Dad told Mom, “I may not have much money, but I’m loyal as hell.” And he was. He was her knight. He just took care of her, especially during the last two years, which were very difficult, and some of that came at the expense of his own health. He is just a rock, and always has been for his family and friends.

Dad taught himself Spanish after he retired. Every day, with a Spanish-English dictionary by his computer, he would read newspapers online from Central America, Mexico, and Spain. He wanted to compare how they covered stories! He and Bradley have also done some volunteer work at church, helping Spanish-speaking immigrants with their English, so they can get better jobs and improve their lives. Being Dad, he got to know his assigned guy, Hector, and when Hector’s wife had a baby, Dad showed up with a car full of presents. Even though Dad has retired from administrative life, he will never actually quit working. He has too much to do. In addition to writing Powerhouse, the history of Journalism at Ole Miss, he has written another book about growing up in Fordyce, Arkansas, which as far as I can tell is the actual Mayberry.

People love my dad. And he loves them. Dad would not do well on a deserted island. There would be nobody to talk to. No stories to tell, and no people to interview — because that’s what Dad does.

He interviews. Meet him, and he will not only get to know your story, he will care about it. Once, Dad went to a meeting in New York City. He forgot to pack his underwear, so he got on a subway late at night to go buy some. My mom was scared to death when she found this out, but Dad just had a basic Dad experience; he talked to people on the subway, got the names of some good bagel shops and delis, and had a great time. We used to joke that Dad knows so many people, if he ever had his photo taken with the pope, or the president, or somebody else really famous, people would see the picture and say, “Who’s that guy up there with Ron?” Dwight Teeter, who was on the faculty at UK and went on to become dean of the college of communication at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, describes Dad as a “terrific raconteur with a Huck Finn grin.” Dad does have a great grin, and a robust laugh.

It is very easy to crack up my father, and I have always taken great pleasure doing that in places where we’re supposed to be silent, like in church. Back in the day, the Oxford-University United Methodist Church was particularly quiet, except for us, on many a Sunday.

Dad taught me how to write, how to think and approach a story.

In high school, when my classmates were using flowery language and passive voice, my papers cut right through the crap and got to the heart of the story. I was the only one in AP English to have a lede.

My parents had great parties for the faculty and students. There was always a keg, always lots of food. Dad had a special soft spot for foreign students. He worried about them, being so far away from home, and so every single Thanksgiving, for as long as I can remember, we always had at least two or three students, usually from Taiwan or China, who had nowhere else to go, who got to stuff themselves with my mom’s good cooking.

Dad is not the most patient man. Once, for weeks, every few days, the phone would ring in the wee hours, that “Oh, God, somebody’s died” time of the night. Nobody was there. The head of the phone company, Mr. X., assured Dad that this was just a testing of the phone lines, and it would stop. When it happened again, Dad called him in the middle of the night. “This is Ron Farrar. The line testing didn’t stop.” It never happened again. Another time, during one of the countless interminable faculty meetings that he has sat through in his lifetime, a professor was pitching a fit about unautho-

rized use of a copy machine, winding up to a big finish, “the people for which it was put here!” There was dead silence for a minute, and then Dad said, “For whom.”

Another faculty meeting, in South Carolina, was very brief. Dad called the faculty together to announce that one of his graduate students, Terry, was going to change genders and become Teri. Dad knew some of what Terry had been through to reach this decision, including a suicide attempt, and he told his faculty that he had better not hear a word from anyone about it. “If she can deal with it, then I reckon we can, too.” Meeting over.

Eight of Dad’s students have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes. But one of the things Dad is proudest of as a teacher is that nobody ever knew whether he was a Republican or a Democrat. He didn’t think it was anybody’s business. I know it grieves him to see how biased journalism has become. To Dad, opinion is one thing, and reporting is another.

My father happens to share an honor with legendary coach Bear Bryant: both are in the Fordyce High School Hall of Fame. (Bryant got his football scholarship to the University of Alabama in 1931, before Dad was born. However, we do have a family connection: my grandmother once hit Bear Bryant with her car.) Dad received this honor two years ago. The man who introduced him kind of rambled and didn’t speak into the microphone very well, and the crowd of several hundred people was the least bit rude, talking, going back for seconds on the fried chicken, catfish and sweet tea. Then Dad got up to accept the award, and within a few seconds, everyone was silent.

All those years of giving lectures and leading discussions paid off. He owned the room. When it was over, I leaned across the table and whispered to Bradley, “He killed!”

Of course he did. Dad was in his element, in a room full of people, with stories to tell, and new ones to hear.

MEEK SCHOOL 13

Mickey Brazeal

Photo by Nathan Latil/UM Communications

I

By James Lumpp

n the intersession last August, several lucky graduate and undergraduate students at the Meek School took a brand new course — Integrated Marketing Communications 556: Multicultural Marketing Communication.

They spent two very full weeks learning about the ins and outs and different dimensions of that important business activity from visiting professor Mickey Brazeal.

Brazeal is an associate professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, where he heads up their innovative integrated marketing communications sequence.

This wasn’t the first time he had helped us. He played a major role in designing Ole Miss’ IMC programs, which just completed their third year, and graduated the second cohort. He has also made presentations on IMC topics and spoken to classes.

He graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and a master’s

14 MEEK SCHOOL

degree in advertising from the University of Illinois, where he was a James Webb Young scholar.

Brazeal spent — and survived — 28 years in the rough-and-tumble Chicago advertising agency business. He started at Marsteller, which was later bought by Young & Rubicam.

Then he worked his way steadily up the career ladder through McCann-Erickson, eventually migrating to Grey/Chicago, which was bought by LOIS/EJ — first as group creative director, then later, as executive creative director. He worked for IMC legend, designer George Lois. While Brazeal was there, billings increased from $45 million to more than $200 million.

In 2000, he shifted into full-time teaching.

Clients and campaigns to his credit were created for Internet startups Stamps.com and Drugstore.com, Armour Meats, First Alert, Jewel Food Stores, Osco/Savon, Eli Lilly, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and BASF Crop Protection products, among others. He also has worked on several international consulting projects and campaigns.

His awards list is lengthy — with Addies, Tellies, Effies and

“

It’s a tough business, very competitive. You have to learn to write very well. In order to succeed, you’ve got to have a passion for it.

more, plus the Gallagher Report’s award for “the most obnoxious TV commercial we’ve seen this month.” Brazeal has quite a sense of humor, too.

When he was honored a few years ago by Nebraska’s Journalism Alumni Association, he told about some of the new initiatives then being worked on at LOIS. They were among the first to see the potential and get involved in interactive advertising in a major way, and in something that was relatively new at the time — customer relationship marketing, or CRM, which today is a major IMC focus worldwide.

Brazeal also showed prescience in his 2009 book “RFID and the Customer Experience.” The letters stand for Radio Frequency Identification, a method of connecting consumers in stores with promotional information and offers they may be interested in as they come close to a particular product. RFID, it turns out, also included a mechanism for faster customer check-out, and an improved system of inventory and distribution controls. A seemingly unlimited number of other applications have now evolved.

He sees the future of IMC as becoming increasingly dominated by CRM, which is really “the idea that rather than focusing on persuading people to commit to a particular behavior, you think more in terms of ‘acquiring and retaining’ customers over a long period.”

In earlier times, he explains, “marketing communications — particularly advertising — was built on what I see as ‘persuade and discard.’ I scoop you up in a television commercial and I just persuade the hell out of you for 30 seconds or 60 seconds or 10 seconds, and then I drop you back in the bowl. And then I scoop up another chunk, I persuade you fiercely for a little while, then I drop you back in the bowl.

“That’s kind of what happens to long-term advertising campaigns.

I did a campaign that went 11 years with the same kind of stuff, and by the end of it, I don’t know a lot about who I reached. I know that I persuaded a bunch of you a bunch of times. The CRM approach would be I’m going to attract and retain. I probably am going to use a promotional device, the sales promotion thing, to get you in the door. But the part that really matters is I must know who you are well enough to know what you want in order that I can keep you.

And that you’ll consider and buy my product multiple times. This wasn’t really feasible before computing got cheap, but it’s certainly feasible now. And you see more effective influences on consumer behaviors because of that.”

Brazeal’s Ole Miss students were full of praise for the multicultural marketing course. Andrew Anglin, then a second-year graduate student and now a marketer at Disney reported, “It was just superb.

He covered all aspects, both international and intercultural. Pretty much the same principles apply, but most of us hadn’t really thought about their application in so many different situations, each with their own set of unique nuances. Professor Brazeal was very dynamic, very thorough, with plenty of interesting experiences to draw upon from his travels and from living and teaching in the diverse Chicago environment.”

The students here impressed Brazeal, too. He found the best of them to be as good as any he’s taught in Chicago, including at Northwestern, Illinois Institute of Technology and Roosevelt.

What advice does he have for those who aspire to an IMC career?

On a panel at the Meek School’s Overby Center in 2011 he said, “It’s a tough business, very competitive. You have to learn to write very well. In order to succeed, you’ve got to have a passion for it.”

When he got into advertising, he said, “The thing that was the greatest surprise to me is the level of intensity. It’s not routine. It’s not easy. It’s really, really intense people working at a really, really intense pace. You need to decide if you can make that kind of commitment.

“The other thing I would say is there are lots of people who are smart; there are lots of people who are hard working. Not everybody’s brave. If you are going to get the attention of people in a media-intense environment where everybody’s just about seen everything, it’s probably not going to be with some kind of reasoned argument. It’s probably not going to be with the recitation of a lot of data.

“You can’t bore people into buying stuff, and you can’t reason people into buying stuff. What you have to do is force an emotional response. And the only way you’re going to get that done for a satiated audience is to do something a little unusual. Do something a little bit brave. If you cannot show stuff to your management that will make them think, ‘I don’t know if I really want to do that,’ you’re not going far enough. You can always go too far and pull it back. But you’ve got to be brave to do this for a living.”

Professor Brazeal is obviously smart, intense, hard working and brave.

We hope he’ll visit Ole Miss again soon and help a new group of students figure out how they can develop the skills and utilize all those virtues as tomorrow’s IMC professionals.

The author is an assistant professor in Integrated Marketing Communication. He was vice president/research director, Sawyer/Riley/Compton (advertising agency), Atlanta; corporate vice president, Fletcher/Mayo/ Associates (advertising agency), St. Joseph, Missouri, Kansas City, Chicago, Atlanta; and advertising/promotion representative, DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware.

MEEK SCHOOL 15

Report on the status of the

FIRST Amendment 16 MEEK SCHOOL

F

By Gene Policinski

or the First Amendment, 2014 marks significant milestones in and outside of the courtroom.

On March 9, 1964, journalists and others celebrated the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. That case set a very high bar for public officials to sue successfully for libel or slander.

For a half-century, the ruling had provided protection for citizens who are critical of government or public officials. It required officials to prove “actual malice,” that is, knowledge that the published facts are wrong or reckless disregard for the truth.

The Sullivan case involved a full-page advertisement in the Times by civil rights activists titled “Heed Their Rising Voices.” Portions of the ad had factual errors in describing activity by the Montgomery, Alabama, police against civil rights protesters and students.

Although he was not mentioned in the ad, city commissioner L.B. Sullivan, who oversaw the police department, sued the newspaper and those who paid to place the ad, for defamation.

Sullivan’s lawsuit was successful in the lower courts, but the case eventually was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 2001 symposium in Montgomery co-sponsored by Alabama State University and the First Amendment Center, Sullivan’s attorney, Roland Nachman, recalled that he was surprised by the ruling: “I said when I left for Washington that the only way I could lose the case [would be if ] the Supreme Court changed the entire law of libel, and that’s exactly what the Supreme Court did.”

The Sullivan decision’s strong protection for statements about public officials regarding matters of public interest rests in what the opinion called the need for vigorous public debate, which would be stifled if speakers or writers had to worry that a single error might expose them to court action.

This bedrock principle in First Amendment law may even affect the current controversies over disclosures of National Security Agency covert surveillance and other confidential government data. Former NSA analyst Edward Snowden defends leaking the secret information, in part, by saying he did it to subject the agency and programs to public comment.

In 1964, a group of civil rights activists began a successful legal challenge to the renewal of a station’s license. This was the first challenge based on failure to offer programming to black residents in a station’s coverage area. Nearly 50 percent of the potential viewers of that station in Jackson were African-Americans, and those who challenged renewal of the license claimed the station denied black officials and spokespersons the Federal Communications Commission-required airtime to rebut station programming.

The case established for the first time that a citizen — not just those with an economic interest in the station – could pursue such a challenge. Eventually, ownership of WLBT passed to a black-majority ownership group. Of note: A number of news outlets reported in December that Roberts Broadcasting, a black-owned media company, will complete a deal this year to sell its three remaining TV stations to ION Media Networks. Thus, no single black-owned full-power TV station will exist in the U.S. A decision about government regulation of the Internet may prove to be the court action this year with the longest legacy. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out current FCC regulations on “net neutrality,” a complex issue involving so-called broadband providers who control electronic traffic on the Internet, but affirmed the agency can regulate the Web as it does other forms of electronic communication.

On Jan. 22, thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators rallied on the National Mall and marched to the U.S. Supreme Court – using First Amendment rights of speech, assembly and petition – on the 41st anniversary of the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In that decision the court upheld a woman’s right to an abortion based on a right to privacy.

A free press flap at the White House extends into this year. News organizations and White House photographers hope that a “working group” announced

MEEK SCHOOL 17

in December by David Boardman, president of the American Society of News Editors, will be able to work out a controversy over access to administration events. Late in 2013, news media groups began complaining to press secretary Jay Carney that official photographers were being admitted to large numbers of events from which the press was excluded.

In the U.S. Supreme Court: McCullen v. Coakle, argued in January, involves a Massachusetts law that creates a 35-foot zone around the entrances and driveways to facilities where abortions are performed. No one may be inside those zones and speak to women seeking treatment except staff of the facilities, police and people just passing through the zone. Critics say the law violates the First Amendment’s protection against government censorship of speech for content, since the effect of the law has been only to limit the speech of anti-abortion advocates. Officials say the law is valid, a “time, place and manner restriction” regarding public safety, citing prior violence around such institutions.

My colleague Charles Haynes, director of the Newseum Institute’s Religious Freedom Center, notes two cases in which arguments will be heard in March: Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius. He writes that the cases involve challenges to the Affordable Care Act requiring for-profit businesses to provide coverage for contraception in health insurance plans. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood are private companies owned by deeply religious families — evangelical and Mennonite respectively — who believe that life begins at conception. Refusal to follow the Act could mean millions of dollars in fines.

McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission challenges limits on campaign contributions to multiple candidates in an election cycle. If the challenge is successful, it will rock the concept of such limits as a means of fighting potential corruption that was

18 MEEK SCHOOL

established in the landmark 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo.

Town of Greece v. Galloway involves prayers at the beginning of local town board meetings in Greece, New York. In 1983, in Marsh v. Chambers, justices said legislatures could hire chaplains to open sessions with a prayer without violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Critics say the board overwhelmingly has chosen Christian ministers to offer such prayer. Supporters argue the pattern simply represents the community’s religious makeup and history.

United States v. Apel, in which a long-time demonstrator is challenging the extent of the government’s ability to set “no protest zones” at the entrances to military installations.

On Jan. 27, the Court said in Air Wisconsin v.

Hoeper — in an echo of Sullivan — that an airline is protected from a claim of defamation when making some errors in filing safety reports, except if made with reckless disregard of the truth. The challenge had come from a former employee and involves a report with some factual errors about the staff.

The author is senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center. He is co-author of the weekly syndicated newspaper and online column, “Inside the First Amendment,” Policinski began his career in Indiana, where he worked as a newspaper reporter and later as state bureau chief for Gannett News Service. In 1980 he became a correspondent in the GNS Washington bureau, reporting on Congress, politics and other issues. In 1982 he was named Washington editor of USA Today during its development, and he held that post when it launched on Sept.

15. In 1983 he was named a Page One editor. In 1985 he was named deputy managing editor/sports and later managing editor/sports. He is the founding editor of USA Today Baseball Weekly (now Sports Weekly). From 1991 through 1993, he was the on-air host of three news, sports and information programs on USA Today Sky Radio.

OVERBY ON KENNEDY

& THE MEDIA

MEEK SCHOOL 19

By Charles L. Overby

W

hen I was a student at Ole Miss in the 1960s, I never gave a second thought about who had been president 50 years earlier. I probably could have done the math and figured out it was Woodrow Wilson.

Things were different for students at Ole Miss this year. They were inundated with news stories and television documentaries about the president of 50 years ago: John F. Kennedy.

In anticipation of that media attention, Curtis Wilkie and I decided to teach a fall journalism course on “Camelot, the Kennedys and the Media.”

Wilkie is a legendary newspaper reporter and author who covered the White House and politics for the Boston Globe.

Neither of us had covered John Kennedy, but Curtis had covered both of his senatorial brothers, Robert of New York and Edward of Massachusetts.

There is a great video clip of a young, clean-shaven Curtis standing beside Robert Kennedy in 1967 as Kennedy investigated hunger and poverty in the Mississippi Delta.

This class was a natural extension of the class we taught last fall on presidential elections and the media. Next fall, Curtis and I plan to teach a course on presidents and the press, from John Kennedy to Barack Obama.

Why do the Kennedys matter? They ushered in the modern era of politics, making image and style an important part of every political campaign. They mastered television just as it was becoming important.

The key to understanding John Kennedy and his brothers was learning about Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. He set high goals for himself and his sons.

He was shrewd, demanding and generally got what he wanted. He wanted his son to be president, and he got it. In fact, all three of his sons ran for president — unprecedented in American history.

He became one of the 12 richest Americans, making fortunes in the stock market and in real estate.

Joe Kennedy understood the importance of public relations and passed this along to his sons. He told his children, “It’s not what you are that counts. It’s what people think you are.”

Kennedy’s cozy relations with media owners and key reporters allowed him to influence what was written about him and his family.

Kennedy gave each of his children $1 million, and he was willing to spend part of his fortune getting his sons elected.

No question, money played a key role in John Kennedy’s rise to the presidency, but that shouldn’t obscure how smart he was. He was one of the few presidents to write books other than personal memoirs. Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were the other presidents who were accomplished authors.

Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his book, “Profiles in Courage.” One of the leading senators whom Kennedy profiled was L.Q.C. Lamar, the most accomplished Mississippi public servant of all time.

Lamar, who taught at Ole Miss, was a U.S. Senator, Interior Secretary under President Grover Cleveland and the only Mississippian to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lamar captured Kennedy’s attention because he was the first Southern senator after the Civil War to work to heal relations between the North and the South.

Kennedy was helped by his close association with members of the press.

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Arthur Krock, Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, gave Kennedy an early boost and promoted his book for the Pulitzer Prize. We know now that Krock was paid for various projects by Joe Kennedy while Krock was working for the Times.

Another close friend of Jack and Jackie Kennedy was Joseph Alsop, an influential columnist who was syndicated in more than 200 newspapers. Alsop frequently dined with the Kennedys in small gatherings, and the Kennedys would travel from the White House to Alsop’s Georgetown house for dinner.

The relationship between Alsop and young congressman Kennedy got off to a rocky start. Kennedy, a bachelor at the time, complained to Alsop that there were no young available women at his dinner parties. That convinced Alsop that Kennedy was not a serious person, and he quit inviting him.

After Kennedy married Jackie and entered the Senate, he became more serious. Alsop was completely charmed by the Kennedys. Robert Merry, who wrote a superb biography of the Alsop brothers (Stewart was a columnist for the Saturday Evening Post), said , “Joe was smitten by the entire Kennedy clan. The charm, class, beauty, confidence--all struck Joe’s fancy.”

Those stylistic traits became obvious when Kennedy was elected president — a sharp contrast to the aging departing president Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie.

Inauguration Day captured the essence of Jack Kennedy. His inaugural speech was one of the most memorable in history with lines still quoted by people today. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” Kennedy said.

“Ask what you can do for your country.”

Also: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

Every president since then has reached for such soaring rhetoric, without success.

Kennedy’s style and idealism quickly met with the realities of the world.

The grim specter of nuclear war hung over Kennedy. Although nuclear war today seems almost unthinkable, the U.S. had used nuclear weapons just 16 years earlier to end World War II. Kennedy was not optimistic that he could avoid a nuclear war. Asked by a dinner party guest at Alsop’s house what he thought the odds were of a nuclear war, Kennedy said, “Of course, if you think simply about the chances in history, you have to quote the odds at somewhere near even that we shall see an H-bomb war within the next 10 years.”

When JFK took office, five hot spots threatened to break out in war: Berlin, Laos, Korea, Formosa (Taiwan) and Cuba.

As it turned out, Cuba dominated Kennedy’s early foreign policy efforts.

Some thought Fidel Castro was just what Cuba needed to escape the problems of a dictatorship. It was fascinating to watch a clip of Ed Sullivan interviewing Castro in Havana for his popular Sunday night variety show.

The failed Bay of Pigs invasion showed Kennedy at his worst — indecisive, weak, unprepared to deal with the nuances of world affairs.

Although the Bay of Pigs was considered Kennedy’s worst failure in office, Kennedy’s job approval rating actually went up 10 points to 83 percent after the Bay of Pigs disclosure.

Kennedy remarked to a friend, “It’s just like Ike. The worse you do, the better they like you.”

Several factors contributed to this unlikely increase in popularity: he didn’t try to hide, he took personal responsibility, he was fighting communism, and he didn’t have to encounter a strident critical press.

Even with his approval ratings up, Time magazine put Kennedy’s early efforts in perspective: “Last week, as John F. Kennedy closed out the first 100 days of his administration, the U.S. suffered a month-long series of setbacks rare in the history of the Republic. First came the Russian man-in-space triumph. Then the shockingly bungled invasion of Cuba. Finally, and belatedly, came the sickening realization that U.S.-backed Laos was about to go down the Communist drain.”

Kennedy learned from his mistakes. He realized that he could not rely on his current CIA and military leadership, and he needed to broaden the group of people who helped him make important decisions.

If the Bay of Pigs was Kennedy’s first big foreign policy disaster, the battle to admit James Meredith to Ole Miss was his first domestic crisis. Kennedy and his attorney general, Robert Kennedy, had hoped to get Meredith enrolled with minimal federal force and with the cooperation of Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett.

The minimal strategy ended in two deaths at Ole Miss after Barnett withdrew his pledge to maintain public safety. Kennedy finally ordered federal troops to the Ole Miss campus, but the damage had been done.

Lessons learned from the Bay of Pigs and Ole Miss helped Kennedy deal more successfully the following year with the Cuban missile crisis and with civil rights in Alabama and nationwide.

Kennedy’s learning curve on civil rights is clear following Ole Miss. Prior to Meredith’s admission to Ole Miss, Kennedy took a cautious, pragmatic approach to civil rights.

He did not want to alienate powerful Southern senators like Jim Eastland of Mississippi and Richard Russell of Georgia because they held the keys to passage of his legislation.

But after Ole Miss, Kennedy learned that half measures would not achieve anything.

As a result, he became the first president to declare to the American people that racial discrimination was a moral issue, not a political issue.

Kennedy’s willingness to put the full force of the federal government against segregation marked a turning point in the struggle for civil rights.

So what remains of the Kennedy legacy today?

Space exploration.

The ban on nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and in outer space.

The Peace Corps.

Civil rights, aided by Lyndon Johnson’s ability to get Congress to pass legislation proposed by Kennedy.

The idealistic view that public service is good.

Is that enough to make Kennedy a great president? Probably not. He was killed less than three years after he took office, so his agenda was unfinished.

But he achieved more in less time than any other president.

With the benefit of 50 years of hindsight, was the Kennedy administration really a time of Camelot?

Camelot was never linked to Kennedy until after he was assassinated. It was a term that Jackie Kennedy pushed to writer Teddy White, who had an exclusive interview with her for Life magazine a week after Kennedy’s death.

She emphasized, “There’ll be great presidents again — and the Johnsons are wonderful, they’ve been wonderful to me — but there’ll never be another Camelot again.”

As White dictated his story from the Kennedy’s kitchen in Hyannisport, the Life editors thought there was too much emphasis on Camelot. But White insisted, and Camelot became what people remembered from the interview.

Years later, White wrote that Camelot was an incorrect description of the Kennedy years. In his book, “In Search of History,” he wrote, “So the epitaph on the Kennedy administration became Camelot — a magic

moment in history, when gallant men danced with beautiful women, when great deeds were done, when writers, artists and poets met at the White House, and the barbarians beyond the walls held back. Which, of course, is a misreading of history. The magic Camelot of John F. Kennedy never existed.”

White wrote that he incorrectly saw Kennedy as a hero. “I would never again, after Kennedy, see any man as a hero. A passage in my own life had closed with a passage in American politics.”

Camelot or not, John Kennedy inspired Americans with his idealism and style. That image will remain alive for years to come.

But 50 years from now, it is unlikely JFK will receive major attention.

History is fickle and evolves from decade to decade. In 50 years, it is far more likely that students at Ole Miss will be asked to remember President Obama as the first African-American president than the president who served for only 1,000 days.

The author is the former chairman of the Freedom Forum, Newseum and Diversity Institute. For 22 years he was chief executive officer of the Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation about the press and the First Amendment. He was CEO of the Newseum from 1997 to 2011 and supervised the building of the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. He also was CEO of the Diversity Institute from its beginning in 2001. Overby has traveled to six continents speaking about media issues and promoting First Amendment freedoms.

Before joining the Freedom Forum, Overby was a reporter and editor for 17 years. He was executive editor of The Clarion-ledger when it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1983.

MEEK SCHOOL 21

PHOTOS BY

STEELE

“ 22 MEEK SCHOOL

My grandmother died 20 years ago. I never thought about documenting her. Why would I? When you’re young you think you’re going to live forever and your loved ones will too. I didn’t know that I would miss her increasingly over the years. Time heals pain, but it doesn’t stop you from wondering what you could have done to preserve every single thing about your loved one before they become a shadow of a memory. I find myself trying to remember little things like the color of Gram’s nail polish. So, I chose to honor her by interviewing other peoples’ grandmothers.

— ALYSIA STEELE, MEEK SCHOOL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

MRS. ANNYCE CAMPBELL,

89, who resides in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was married for 69 years when her husband passed away in May 2013. When asked what she loved about him, she sat for a few minutes, didn’t say a word to me, but instead asked her daughter to hand her the framed photograph of him that was on the piano. Her fingers traced over his face in the picture, a single tear fell from her eyes and slowly glided down her cheek. I was embarrassed I had asked her such a personal question and then she said, “Everything. Everything. He was the most gentle person you wanna see. Loving and caring. He was the first somebody that I loved. My husband was mischievous, let me just say that. Just as mischievous as he could be. He was always that jolly, jolly guy.” And then she smiled at me.

MRS. VIRGINIA HOWER,

93, who resides in Clarksdale, Mississippi, talked about racial inequality and how she “passed” for white so she could have better opportunities.

Here is what she said: “One Minute Café was on Issaquena Street and they had the best burgers. They just didn’t allow us to go into that hamburger place. We had to go into the alley to get a hamburger. You began to wonder why. And my grandparents used to send me in the restaurants to get the hamburgers if we didn’t go in the alley and they never knew the difference. Going to the café, I felt dirty. And if you could pass for White, all was well. I guess you got acclimated to the condition. And then you got to thinkin’ how foolish this life is, how foolish. Then you got to thinkin’ about it and say take advantage of it.”

MEEK SCHOOL 23

PHOTOS BY

HARRIS I was introduced to Shelby, Mississippi, in January, 2013. I was on my way to speak with a group of students participating in after-school programming called “Peer Power and Students Involved in Community Change.” When I asked for driving directions, I was told, “it’s a green building across from the old depot.” I felt a bit uneasy driving to the Delta for the first time with no GPS, but after that trip, I realized #1, a GPS isn’t too helpful in some parts, and #2, there was no way to miss the bright green 1012 Fratesi building in Shelby, Miss. The talk went well and the scholars were wonderful. The week after the presentation, Anne Preus, the director of the program, let me know that the scholars started a journalism club as a result of my message. She asked if I would come back, and without hesitation, I returned. I started to document their stories, and capture the achievement that takes place after school in a building with walls full of encouragement and scholarship, rooms filled with the energy and wit of youth, and rooms filled with the love and encouragement that has made an impact on the 476 students who have participated in Peer Power and SICC. Two journalism students, DJ Jones and Amanda Wilson, have traveled with me to document their stories of empowerment.

— MIKKI K. HARRIS, MEEK SCHOOL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

24 MEEK SCHOOL

Melik Gooden is a scholar in the Students Involved in Community Change program in Shelby, Mississippi.

Gooden is one of 262 students who have participated in SICC programming that includes entrepreneurship, music, health and college readiness projects.

From left: Korderick Davis talks with Jestin Dishman during the SICC program in Shelby, Mississippi. Davis and some of his SICC counterparts write and record music that reaches beyond the Mississippi Delta.

MEEK SCHOOL 25

PHOTOS BY JOSH MCCOY Athletics Photographer, Marketing/Promotions, Ole Miss Rebels

Most of my favorite photos are special to me because of how I planned for them and how they make the people of this community feel.

I love the Egg Bowl pic because of how hard I worked to get it lined up. I knew if I could position myself correctly, the stadium lights would backlight the trophy, making it glow. It’s not easy maneuvering yourself through very excited guys twice your size.

The baseball dog pile photo also took quite an amount of maneuvering. That happens so quickly that you have to be in the right spot at the right time. I 26 MEEK SCHOOL

know that most of the jumping comes from the guys who get a running start, so I sprinted out to the opposite side of the pile, away from every other photographer, at an angle where the guys in the bullpen would be facing me. To make it work, I had to get there quicker than guys ten years younger than me who train every day. Ended up getting kicked in the face, but I got an image that represents history at Ole Miss.

Sam Kendricks’ jump photo in front of the American flag was just a case of being observant and planning. He’s an All-American, and I had the idea to shoot it this way the second I walked into the building

and saw the layout. I took a risk with this shot, because to get it, I had to leave the normal shooting area and go to the other side of the facility. If something great had happened on this jump, and I hadn’t lined this one up correctly, I would’ve missed it. He jumped perfectly, and it worked.

The 2014 football promo shots are some of my favorites for the exact opposite reason. I didn’t come up with these ideas until about five minutes before the players showed up. It was all done on the fly, and I think that’s kind of cool.

MEEK SCHOOL 27

POSITIVE

THINKING

28 MEEK SCHOOL

I

By Charlie Adams t has been almost 30 years since I attended Ole Miss and if there is one thing I can say about life, it is that positive thinking is a major factor in quality of life, especially these days!

With all of the challenges we face, it is hard to keep positive thoughts flowing. In fact, we have to be careful to not fall into a habit of allowing negative thoughts to rattle around constantly. Recently, I was delivering a positive attitude seminar to a manufacturing company, when I asked their employees how they would feel if someone came to their house, knocked on the door and then bumped them aside as they entered.

Upon looking around the house, this stranger then proceeds to say all kinds of mean and critical things about the decorating and style of the house. The stranger then lights into the homeowner with all kinds of critical comments.

Would you let such a person get away with that negativity?

No! You would throw them out or call the police. You would be furious.

However, we have no problem letting negative thoughts enter our head, take root and cut us apart.

Keeping a positive attitude and a positive flow of thoughts takes work and discipline. It’s like a vibrant marriage. It takes effort.

Here are some suggestions.

I challenge you to eliminate negative self-talk. Each time you have a negative thought, stop in your tracks and make a real loud foghorn sound: “Ahhhh ooooooo guhhh!”

It doesn’t matter if you are in line at the grocery store, eating at a restaurant or attending a wedding. Belt it out like you are a crazy person. The embarrassment of it all will highly motivate you to avoid negative self-talk.

While delivering my attitude seminar in Chicago, a lady said a good idea was to wear a rubber band around a wrist, and when negative self-talk pops up, lift up the rubber band and pop the heck out of yourself. She had done it and said it worked! Tammera Wine, a bank executive, once told me she heard Joel Osteen talk about “changing the channel” of our thoughts. When you have a negative thought, literally think of your mind changing the channel to one of positive thoughts.

Here is something that has worked for me for years, as far as getting my self-talk back in line (it tends to get out of line sometimes).

There is the story of an old Cherokee chief: An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life...

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.

“One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego.

“The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,

kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

“This same fight is going on inside you — and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.”

That is what self-talk boils down to. What are you feeding the most, negative or positive thoughts? Quit feeding the bad ones. Make them starve.

When we conjure scenarios of what might happen with most of those possibilities being negative, we rob ourselves of positive selftalk. Such behavior reminds me of “Dragnet.” It actually aired before my time, but I have seen reruns in which Sgt. Joe Friday is regularly getting information from female informants. When they start rambling or getting off point, he always says, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Save that line for your inner thought when you start cooking up negative possibilities.

In one of my attitude seminars out West, a lady said when negative thoughts attack her she “sends Jesus to the door.” I had another person say they instantly visualize a giant red STOP sign. One fellow said he had read that you should picture your mind as a garden, and negative thoughts are weeds.

Pick them out.

I had another person tell me what worked for them was pretending they had a vacuum cleaner in their mind and turning it on to suck out all the negative thoughts.

When it comes to staying positive and keeping positive thoughts, what tools have you been using? Dr. Ruth Warren, a retired school principal and longtime friend of mine, says Martin Seligman’s book “Learned Optimism” had a powerful effect on her as far as not taking things personally, realizing bad things don’t last forever and considering many people are worse off in life.

When I was at Ole Miss, Dr. Jim Pratt in the journalism department helped me tremendously with his positive attitude and thoughts. As a sophomore elementary education major, I happened to try out for sportscaster on the Ole Miss student TV news.

I was dreadful at first, but Pratt kept encouraging me and telling me he saw great potential. He was always positive, and we had many talks about keeping positive thoughts as our foundation. I went into television news in 1985 and had many years of success in markets such as Memphis, New Orleans and South Bend, Indiana.

My ability to stay positive and think positive played a major role, and Pratt and Ole Miss were pivotal.

The author is the author of “How to Build a Positive Attitude and KEEP the Darn Thing!” (Corby Publishing). The 1985 Ole Miss grad runs seminars that help organizations build and keep cultures of positive, solution-centered and team-oriented attitudes. You can learn more about his programs at StokeTheFireWithin.com.

MEEK SCHOOL 29

How in the world did we forget

THE DELTA?

By Bill Rose

W

hen cotton was king, writers from around the country could scarcely resist a road trip to the exotic Delta.

They would wax eloquent about the white cotton, the black field hands, the palatial mansions owned by white planters (never farmers!), the poverty, the cruel burden of segregation, the violence, and go on about William Faulkner, even though Faulkner was, of course, a hill boy.

Over time, as cotton waned and civil rights laws were passed and black people got elected to run much of the Delta, the lines weren’t quite so clear. Even the clichés were harder to come by. So the writers came less often.

And they missed an essential chapter in the never-ending story of race.

In a land that is 75 percent black, the poverty is worse.

There are no jobs. If they possibly can, young people tend to flee, preferably to places where the living — and the money — is easier. Teenage pregnancy is epidemic. The area has some of the highest obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease rates in America. Much of the population doesn’t even have ready access to healthy food; they eat out of gas stations and convenience stores. Generations are caught up in a cruel welfare cycle. The schools are still segregated and as sorry as ever. For the most part, churches are either black or white.

And it is a rare thing for white folks to invite black folks over to the house for dinner and vice versa. Black people control the politics. White people have all the money.

What a mess.

Yet, something is stirring in the Delta.

In Indianola, black and white community leaders worked hand in hand to pull off a Smithsonian-quality museum dedicated to the life of B.B. King. Greenwood has a luxury

30 MEEK SCHOOL

hotel, the Alluvian, which many rank among the state’s best.

Thanks to the seeds planted by Morgan Freeman and Bill Luckett, Clarksdale’s downtown packs ‘em in at night to worship at the rowdy altar of the blues. More often than not, the people dancing on the bar are from Europe and Japan and the tourists outnumber the locals.

And now, the major cities of the Delta are electing white mayors.

Indianola, Greenville, Clarksdale, Greenwood — each of them nearly 70 percent black — have elected white mayors recently. Cleveland and Tunica have white mayors but have never had a black mayor. All of this in a region where racial bloc voting used to be the order of the day.

This is a major sea change.

But why? What happened?

Have voters suddenly become color blind? Has the electorate become mature and sophisticated? Is it that voters are fed up with leaders who aren’t making things better and simply voting for whoever they perceive to be the most qualified to do that? And where do we go from here?

That’s why we have our Depth Reporting 580 students in the Delta again this spring — to hunt for answers. To stay with the story of one of America’s most embattled regions, a place where the grinding poverty is matched only by the poorest of Indian reservations out west. A place plagued as much as any by the age-old problem of race.

It is a difficult assignment. That’s why we do it. If you challenge smart students, they will rise to the bait. And there is bait a-plenty in the Delta.

It is, in fact, the best writing and reporting laboratory around. Many of our students have never been to the Delta until they take this course. They are alternately shocked and bewitched by what they find. It can be a frightening thing to venture off campus, out of your comfort zone, to

interview strangers about the touchy subject of race in a land you’re unfamiliar with. But isn’t that what reporting is all about?

Thus far, we have published magazines on the North Delta’s economic struggles, the near collapse of Greenville, the record Mississippi River flood of 2011 and Delta food. This one will be about the legacy of the Voting Rights Act in the Delta. It’s a story the media have scratched at, but seldom explored with any depth.

We will ask students to look back at the long and perilous struggle for the right to vote. They’ll profile the foot soldiers of the movement, those men and women who risked their lives to go into communities and persuade beaten down poor folks to make the scary trip to the courthouse to try to register. They will talk to people who were threatened, jailed, beaten for trying to register black people. They will examine the very real gains in race relations.

And the problems that remain.

They will be asked to assess the political, social and economic impact of the black political takeover of much of the Delta.

And they will be asked to put it all into context and explain what has happened, why and where we go from here.

A tall order.

But that’s what in-depth magazine journalism is supposed to be.

The taller the better.

The class has changed, much like the Delta. The first time we offered it, we had to beg people to take it. Now it is an Honors College class and each year, more Honors College students want in.

This year, we will have 10 Honors College students and two other journalism students with excellent GPAs. We give ambitious highachievers good stories and put them to work.

Some of the initial reporting was ragged and required students to return again and again until they got what they needed. Over time, the efficiency of the reporting has improved. The writing has gotten better as well. Students are learning how to fight through the agony that goes with returning to the campus with hours of tape recorded interviews and having to sort through all of that, make sense of it and tell the story in an interesting, readable way. It sometimes takes three drafts, but we get there.

Many find the hard work fun. We spent last year’s spring break headquartered in the heavily discounted, eclectic blues-themed apartments above Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale, and rumor has it, students managed to squeeze in a little late-night musical enjoyment. On the last night, we found our way to Po’ Monkey’s, one of the last real Delta juke joints, a rough-hewn place tucked far down a rutted gravel road out from the tiny hamlet of Merigold.

And then there are the people. Our students are our best ambassadors and they have made many friendships there. It’s a very social, very friendly place, and people generally love the fact that our students care enough to write about them. It helps that about every 20 feet, you run into the most colorful character you’ve ever met.

So when I get asked — as I often do — why we don’t go to other parts of the state, I have a very simple answer.

Why? We’ve got the Delta.

The author grew up in the Mississippi Delta, then worked for the Delta Democrat-Times in Greenville, covered the South for the Miami Herald, and served as managing editor of The Palm Beach Post. He joined the Meek School faculty in 2009.

Rachael Walker and Katie Williamson interview Frank "Rat" Ratliff in front of Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Miss., March 15, 2013. Ratliff passed away 13 days after University of Mississippi students interviewed him about the hotel. Photo by Phillip Waller

MEEK SCHOOL 31

THE HEARST FOUNDATION

32 MEEK SCHOOL

T

By Michael Tonos

hey are considered the crowning glory for student journalists, comparable to the Pulitzers for their professional counterparts.

And Ole Miss, like many other universities, is using the prestigious Hearst Journalism Awards Program not only to produce winners but also to improve student skills.

“It helps raise the bar on the quality of student work,” said assistant professor Patricia Thompson, director of Student Media and the school’s contest chairperson. “It’s fun to compete with the best programs in the country.”

The contest, open to all accredited journalism programs, recognizes excellence in writing, photojournalism, broadcast news and multimedia. But beyond the individual recognition, the standards set by the awards program push everyone to do better.

“We have conversations with our students to guide them to produce outstanding journalism to enter in Hearst,” said Thompson, who has been at Ole Miss since 2009.

Will Norton, the dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, praised the Hearst program for its emphasis on quality. “It’s good at getting students away from doing a few stories that are merely good to doing journalism of excellence,” said Norton, who has served on the contest’s steering committee since 1984.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM This year, the contest will put as much as $500,000 in the hands of students and schools in the form of scholarships, grants and stipends for participating universities.

The competition is funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, which operates under the Hearst Foundations. It is open to the 105 accredited journalism schools in the nation, and all but about 15 participate, said Jan Watten, the program director for the Hearst awards.

Unlike many awards programs, which have one deadline each year, Hearst has 14 competitions throughout the year, beginning in October and ending in April. Each school can submit two entries per category per competition. Ole Miss, said Thompson, usually submits at least one entry in each category.

This year’s program features five monthly writing competitions, two photojournalism competitions, three broadcast news competitions — one in radio and

two in television — and four multimedia competitions. The top winners receive scholarships, others earn certificates and universities get $100 for each entry.

The entries are judged by media professionals. “The backbone of the program is the quality of the judges that we have,” said Paul “Dino” Dinovitz, executive director for the Hearst Foundations. “They’re leaders in their field. … They’re all at the top of their game.”

The national champions are selected from the monthly first-place finishers during a final championship, usually in San Francisco, but held in Washington in June of this year.

Since its inception 54 years ago, Watten said, the Hearst program has received more than 36,000 entries.

About 10,000 have received an award or certificate.

“The awards program presents excellence,” Dinovitz said. “It’s no different from receiving an Academy Award or an Emmy or a Peabody.”

Norton agrees, calling the prizes “the Pulitzers of college journalism.” Its winners, he said, represent “the cream of the crop in journalism programs throughout the nation.”

Any type of recognition from the contest — financial or otherwise — is valuable to the students, Watten said. “It really does give students a sense of pride,” she said, “and it encourages them to continue in this craft.”

That was the case for Ruth Ingram Cummins, a 1982 Ole Miss graduate who was recognized for news writing.

“The award was validation that I was on my way to becoming a career newspaper reporter,” said Cummins, who has been an editor and reporter at The Clarion-Ledger for 27 years.

“I was thrilled,” she recalled. “A Hearst award was the biggest recognition we could receive. It was a very humbling experience, and to this day, I remember holding the award certificate in my hand and being in awe.”

More recent Ole Miss honorees, said Thompson, include: Marianna Breland, who won fifth place for enterprise writing for “The Million Dollar Mile,” a 2011 article about towboats on the Mississippi River that was published as part of a depth reporting class.

Alex McDaniel, recognized for editorial writing with a piece about the controversy over selecting a new Ole Miss mascot. It was published in The Daily Mississippian when she was editor in chief in 2010.

Ryan Rigney, selected for in-depth writing in 2011 for his look at the first Iraqi-developed video game, published in GamePro magazine.

“It has been wonderful to see our students work hard for the national recognition that the Hearst contest provides,” Thompson said.

The overall winners, Norton said, leap to the top of the talent pool. He told of a student at another school who, immediately after winning a Hearst prize, was approached by a recruiter for a national media group.

“The top media executives are looking and hiring people at the top level,” he said.

According to Dinovitz, the competition provides yet another benefit that will help students later in their careers.

“Our competition invites these kids to participate in the marketplace,” he said. “Competition starts at the school — only two will be submitted. From that point on, those two are winners. They’ve already made it through the first hoop. You learn something from the experience of competing. That’s what they’re going to be doing.”

Despite changes in technology, both Dinovitz and Watten say mastery of the basics remains the focus of the awards, which started as a writing program and now includes broadcast, photojournalism and multimedia.

“We honor and recognize the fundamentals of journalism,” Watten said. “The core fundamentals are very, very important. A student has to know how to write.”

The multimedia category was added five years ago, Dinovitz said, because technology is a “huge part” of the journalistic process. Still, he said, “The content and the quality of the work are the king and queen of the competition.”

And that commitment to recognizing the best college journalism is what pushes all of the participants, including Ole Miss, to shoot higher day in, day out.

“You never know what the judges are going to pick, and there certainly have been times when we didn’t win and felt we deserved to get the award,” Thompson said. “But the overall experience is worth the time and effort, for us and our students.”

The author teaches journalism and writing for marketing at Ole Miss. Tonos graduated from Ole Miss in 1973 and spent 35 years in the newspaper business, serving as executive editor for The Sun Herald (Biloxi-Gulfport) and managing editor for The Sun Herald, The Vicksburg Post and Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. He lives in Tupelo, where he runs JMT Consulting. He and his wife, Jane, have four children and two grandchildren.

MEEK SCHOOL 33

PAUL KEANE

By Maggie McDaniel

P

aul Keane, publisher of the Wayne County News, has been in the newspaper business for a total of 35 years, but perhaps he is best known in Waynesboro, Mississippi, as the voice of sports in Wayne County.

“I used to do radio way back, and the radio station here in Waynesboro only covered football for one school,” Keane said. “We had been looking for a long time for software to do web broadcasting of Wayne Academy football and basketball, softball and baseball playoffs for both the academy and Wayne County High School.”

Carey Meitzler, the “Voice of the Maroon Tide” in Picayune, Mississippi, knew that Keane was looking, and he called several years ago.

“I think I’ve found what you’re looking for,” he told Keane.

“He told me about Teamline,” Keane said, “a telephone and Internet service that provides the software for live play-by-play from anywhere in the world.”

Keane called Teamline to learn about the software that they offered and then signed the paperwork.

“We pay them a fee, we then sell all the local ads, and we gain revenue,” he said. “Most importantly, we serve our community.

“We do all the football games for Wayne Academy and the playoff games in basketball, softball and baseball for the academy and Wayne County High School.

“I told Tommy Campbell of the Choctaw Sun-Advocate in Gilbertown, Alabama, about what we were doing, and when the radio station in his town went dark, he began live streaming radio.”

Keane’s initiative demonstrates that it takes a lot to be a good journalist. You have to know and practice the five Ws and a great deal more.

In fact, he says journalism students need to “get out there and get experience and build up contacts and do things for free for the experience while there are no bills to pay. “ “Diversify your skills, and be ready for the next big thing like Twitter or Instagram,” Keane said.

Keane does a little bit of everything for the newspaper. His job includes the smallest things like cash management to the bigger things like designing web pages for the paper’s website, photographing pictures for stories, editing videos and traveling to cover games.

During football season, the paper produces a 30-minute preview show, a 30-minute Friday night highlights show and a weekly video “Plays of the Week” show.

All of them have full-scale commercials in them that are sold, and the shows include varsity, junior varsity and middle school football highlights and previews, along with cheerleader, band, dance team

34 MEEK SCHOOL

and other features. The shows air all week long on the newspaper’s website at www.thewaynecountynews.com.

Keane was raised in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. At age eight, he started delivering the Dallas Times Herald with the help of his mother.

Eight years later, a coach told Keane he was too short and too skinny to play football. So he covered the football team for the Mesquite Daily News.

After high school, he attended the University of Texas for two and a half years before transferring to Southwest Texas State (now Texas State University) and worked for both the school newspaper and the San Marcos Daily Record as a sports editor.

When he was graduated, he worked for the San Marcos newspaper before moving to San Angelo, Texas, to work for the San Angelo Standard-Times before returning to the Mesquite Daily News.

Keane was a sports editor and writer for 25 years, eventually moving to Alabama and into management. Then he settled in Waynesboro and has been at the Wayne County weekly newspaper for 10 years.

On Jan. 1, 2014, the Wayne County News celebrated 124 years of publishing.

Keane works everyday doing many tasks and covering what is going on in the town. It is important for Keane and his staff to cover Waynesboro instead of world news that can be found anywhere.

Marshall Wood, a former mayor of the town, described “the staggering amount of time Paul appeared to be working. As time progressed, it became obvious, through the quality of his publication, that all those hours he appeared to be working, he was.

“As a community, we have been very fortunate to have him here.”

He is viewed as a public figure in his town. People expect him to fix things, and at times it is hard to do so.

Keane jokes that his wife will not go to Wal-Mart with him because customers often corner him to talk about something in the newspaper. He thinks it is a good and bad thing that people care about the news and are willing to approach him.

When he was graduated from college, newspapers were number one among the media.

Now there is so much more.

Perhaps Mayor Richard Johnson described Keane most concisely: “You cannot ask for anybody to do any better of a job.

“I mean he really cares for the community. I cannot praise him enough.”

The author is a junior, broadcasting journalism major from Columbus, Georgia.

Photo by Chris Keane/Wayne County News

You cannot ask for anybody to do any better of a job. I mean he really cares for the community. I cannot praise him enough.

— MAYOR RICHARD JOHNSON MEEK SCHOOL 35

Evolution of

JOURNALISM The Case for Meek Inventing the Future

36 MEEK SCHOOL

By Hank Price

W

e are entering a remarkable new era in journalism. Led by empowered consumers, news is being gathered, processed, shared and even understood in radical new ways. The very definition of news is being questioned, as is the role of journalism in tomorrow’s society. This changing landscape has created a time of great risk and great opportunity.

Most of our traditional journalistic institutions, professional and educational, are understandably wary of transformational change during a time when much of the future seems unknown. That is why industry has taken a conservative approach, expanding news products onto digital platforms, delving into such things as mobile apps and even accepting some input from users, but not doing anything that might risk current business models. A cautious response is understandable because it allows us to do what we do best, produce traditional news stories, then repurpose them for new media.

What it does not do is invent the future. That role is being left to the consumer and new media players.

Ceding radical innovation to others creates a different kind of risk, one that could potentially put many of the things we hold dear – ethics, fairness, balance – in danger. This is not surprising since the current reinvention of communication is being driven not by journalism, but by two great social tsunamis, consumer choice and consumer connectivity. Choice has moved power from traditional media to the consumer. Connectivity has created an activist consumer who now demands a role in the news process. This reality of consumer power will continue to grow and assert itself in ways we cannot presently imagine.

Since we cannot control this process, we must make a decision. Will we continue to react to change or will we partner with the consumer to invent the future?

If we choose to partner and invent, we must first understand that the future is not about technology. Technology is merely the enabler. The future is about content. Content that addresses the fundamental needs and interests of human beings. One of the most basic human needs is to know truth from fiction. It is in this quest for truth that our paths align.

No one wants to get up every morning and figure out the world by themselves. Everyone wants a trusted source they can believe in. If we can become the consumer’s trusted source for news and information, she will reward us with her two most important assets, her time and her money.

In the past, being a trusted source meant producing news stories that were accurate, fair and balanced. In the new world it also means helping the user sort through massive amounts of information, much of it produced by consumers themselves, to get at the truth. It means bringing context, challenge and listening to what is now a two-way conversation. It means every point of contact must be transparent and build trust because any failure on our part will bring an end to the relationship.

Becoming the consumer’s trusted source will not be easy because it requires tearing down our internal cultural walls. But tear them down we

must. Today’s consumer has already moved past platform centric journalism to become purely content centric. Those who see Twitter as their chief source of breaking news only care if the information is correct, not where it came from.

We are at a time that requires great leadership. The field is open. The opportunity is clear. Who will have the guts to seize it?

The Meek School of Journalism and New Media is already growing a reputation for innovation. The Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, the Magazine Innovation Center, the IMC program and the growing outreach to the professional community all mark an organization that is looking forward. Meek is well positioned to become a national leader in future thinking.

Here is a place to start. Create a partnership between educators, professionals and consumers with the specific goal of inventing journalism’s future model. Educators are important to the mix because they add context, organization and advocacy of journalistic values. Professionals are essential because they will build future media businesses. Journalism students may be the most critical partner of all because they embody the reality of the new media consumer. Today’s students are the empowered users who will choose how media works in the future.

For 30 years I’ve heard television people ask “How can we get young people to watch television news?” I finally know the answer. We can’t. Perhaps it is time to find out what they are interested in.

Top tier educators and consumer/students are of course already present at Meek, but the third partner, professionals, will need to be recruited and Meek has the perfect opportunity to do that. Media companies are notorious for throwing new managers into the water and finding out who can swim. Mid-level professionals have few options for management training.

By filling the mid-level management training void, Meek can gain access to future industry talent at a time when they are still young enough to embrace new ideas.

Simply putting these three key groups together will not be enough to create the future. They must be challenged, pushed and probed to take calculated risks and to actually lead change.

In his “on the record” blog, Dean Will Norton recently wrote that if Al Neuharth was leading a media giant today he would gather his trusted lieutenants, go to a secluded spot, and create a bold new vision for media.

Having worked at Gannett during Al’s era, I know this to be true.

I also know how difficult it is to change culture in today’s media companies. Al understood this, which is why he called for bold, visionary leadership in journalism education. Now is the time for The Meek School of Journalism and New Media to become that visionary leader.

The author is president and general manager of WXII-TV, Hearst Television’s NBC affiliate in Winston-Salem/Greensboro, North Carolina. He is also senior director of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center where he teaches in both the Executive Education Seminars and the Kellogg Media Management MBA program. Much of his teaching and writing at Northwestern concentrates on the future of electronic media, especially the development of dominant and alternate local news brands.

MEEK SCHOOL 37

THE MISSISSIPPI

PRESS ASSOCIATION

F

By Charlie Mitchell

or nearly 70 years, the common goals of journalism educators at the University of Mississippi and the Mississippi Press Association have been nurtured to the benefit of both.

The MPA dates to 1866. It is the sixth oldest press association in the United States and perhaps the oldest in the South.

Its original mission was to foster and encourage continued development of the state’s commercial newspaper industry. That mission, though diversified by the addition of Mississippi Press Services and the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation, continues unchanged.

Journalism at Ole Miss is much younger, dating only to 1946, when the degree field was added to the School of Business. It later was moved to the College of Liberal Arts and became the degree-granting Meek School of Journalism and New Media in 2009.

While journalism at Ole Miss, like the MPA, has enjoyed continued growth, a core mission of the school — sparking the careers of effective, truth-centered communicators — has remained unchanged.

“The University of Mississippi owes its primary duty to the sons and daughters of Mississippi taxpayers who save and sacrifice so their children are offered educational opportunities,” said Will Norton, dean of the Meek School.

“We don’t forget that. For students here to serve internships or participate in special projects with Mississippi newspapers is a great plus for them. For them to work for Mississippi newspapers after graduation is something by which we measure our success as a school.”

Since being appointed as inaugural dean of the new school, Norton has visited dozens of the state’s newspapers, large and small, usually with Layne Bruce, MPA executive director. The reason is to gauge how the school is doing and, more specifically, how the university can improve service to the state’s press.

“MPA and its members have been blessed with a strong and active relationship with the journalism school at Ole Miss,” Bruce said. “We are indebted to the administration and faculty for being such strong supporters of journalism. Their role in cultivating the next generation of great writers and thinkers is a vital component of community journalism.”

38 MEEK SCHOOL

Work of the Jackson-based staff of the MPA is multifaceted, with much of the day-to-day operations centered on Mississippi Press Services, created in 1977 as a not-for-profit business subsidiary.

Indeed, S. Gale Denley, a weekly newspaper publisher and respected faculty member at Ole Miss, was instrumental in designing and creating MPS. Denley knew that national and regional advertisers would appreciate the “one-stop shopping” aspect of MPS, which accepts and places display and classified ads statewide as customers direct.

Denley, who was an MPA board member and served the organization as president, became a fixture in the organization and at Ole Miss, where the Student Media Center was named in his honor.

Another prime connection between the journalism school centers on MPA’s Government Affairs Committee and the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, based in the Meek School.

Creating a “good government” entity with a base broader than the state’s newspaper industry was the idea of 1997 MPA President Dan Phillips. As publisher of The Oxford Eagle, Phillips knew the state would be well served by clear and generous open meetings and open records laws. But he also knew that if only journalists lobbied for improvements, the chances of success were slim.

Initially, the MCFOI was operated from Jackson, but it was eventually domiciled on the Ole Miss campus. With Jeanni Atkins of the Meek School faculty serving as executive director, the organization continues to be supported by media and non-media individuals and entities. It has worked with MPA Government Affairs every year, especially during the legislative session, and the result has been many improvements in access laws, in leading seminars for local officials and in administrative enforcement.

MUTUAL SERVICE Through the decades, Ole Miss has gladly served as host to regional events for MPA members and has provided faculty experts to serve as speakers and panelists for a multitude of MPA-sponsored clinics, workshops and conventions.

Perhaps the most frequent guest in recent years is Samir “Mr. MagazineTM” Husni, who has appeared at dozens of MPA events to update members on industry trends and, more recently, to assist members

who have chosen to add magazines to their publications offerings.

The Meek School also has offered faculty members to speak on a wide range of topics, ranging from basic news and feature writing to website design, social media and the latest techniques in photojournalism.

Likewise, MPA has been a source of constant support to journalism education at the University of Mississippi, primarily through the Mississippi Press Association Education Foundation.

Of prime importance to students directly are the MPA scholarships many Ole Miss students have been privileged to receive, but the ongoing MPAEF Grants for Services program also has meant much to the school. These competitive grants have allowed the school to expand its inventory of cameras, software and computers for student use.

Additional and very meaningful benefits for Meek School students are the summer internship stipends awarded to aspiring journalists selected to work at one of 120 MPA-member publications. Today, few internships pay students, but MPA member publications offer compensation plus the stipends, which are a significant help to those starting out.

Although student journalists at Ole Miss like to enter their work from The Daily Mississippian into the professional Better Newspaper advertising and editorial compensations, the annual O.C. McDavid Conference in Jackson has been a great resource for students and many have entered and won prizes in this statewide competition for college writers, designers and photographers.

COMBINED VENTURES In addition to the more longstanding service initiatives, the birth of the Meek School has brought with it a couple of mutual initiatives.

Each year since 2010, Meek School students have left campus for “weekend reporting.” MPA members decide on a package of stories and photos they would like to have, and the students research, interview, shoot and write — often generating extra material for websites.

Projects have been diverse, centering on downtown redevelopment in Hattiesburg, profile edition copy in Brookhaven, tourism in Vicksburg and health care in Greenwood.

There is no cost to the member newspaper other than a meal for students. The Meek School and the MPA have shared payment of

remaining costs. The members get the copy and photos. The students are energized by a real world experience and, for many, their first credit and bylines.

Another offering has been the stories and photos gathered by the Meek School’s annual depth reporting classes. Each spring, a topic is chosen and when the package is complete, the students’ work is offered to all MPA members to use if and how they desire. Again, there is no cost to members, and students are rewarded with clippings.

For the future, discussions are under way to create spring internships for journalism students in the state capital. Students selected for these projects would cover state government, including the Legislature, and be a resource — writing exclusive stories or just running down quotes and answers to questions for member newspapers.

DOWN THE ROAD The Meek School attracts aspiring journalists from throughout the nation. Specifically, nearly half of journalism undergraduates are nonresidents, which mirrors the university population overall. But, as he said, Dean Norton believes that the school’s success is measured in large part how well the press in Mississippi is served by its programs as well as its graduates.

To that end, the Meek School has created a new track in its master’s in journalism program for early- or mid-career professionals. The track is designed to help journalists polish or enhance their storytelling skills while gaining familiarity and specialized abilities for the multiple platforms that consumers now use when they seek news and information.

And the school also is working in the pre-college arena to ramp up the work of the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association to encompass not just traditional high school newspaper and yearbook operations, but also their magazines and Internet programs.

Part of this includes adding more scholarships to the Meek School for high school journalists, offering seed grants to encourage more high schools to create media studies programs and products and offering merit grants and technology grants to assist the Mississippi schools with media programs to expand and innovate.

The author is assistant dean of the Meek School and an assistant professor.

MEEK SCHOOL 39

How Fibber MCgee & Molly

WON WORLD WAR II It’s December 9, 1941. It’s Radio. It’s Live. There is a studio audience. The United States has just gone to war. One can only try to imagine the atmosphere in the studio only two days after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The

T

By Mickey Smith

he broadcast began with the announcement: “NBC will be on the air with the latest war news at the beginning of every program day and night. We thank the sponsor of this program for relinquishing its time in order to bring you the latest news from the NBC Newsroom.”

It was up to the announcer Harlow Wilcox to open on a seemingly ordinary note. But not for long. “We have just received this message for our listeners,” he said, “in a telegram from the president of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc., our sponsor: ‘In these serious days, there can be no division of opinion. The United States is at war. We are all ready and eager to do our part. The makers of Johnson’s Wax® and GloCoat® believe it is in the public interest to continue programs as entertaining as “Fibber McGee and Molly.” They have a place in national morale. So you can continue to hear “Fibber McGee and Molly” and still be in touch with latest developments. We have asked the National Broadcasting Co. to feel free at any time to cut into our programs with important news flashes and announcements,’ signed, H.F. Johnson, Jr.” There was no reference to the war in the program proper. There just hadn’t been time to work in war messages, especially in a way, later perfected, that did not interfere inordinately with the flow of humor.

But the show closed with a moving rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” sung by that live studio audience.

This was the beginning of a remarkably successful effort to combine absolutely first-class entertainment with public service.

40 MEEK SCHOOL

show had already been written! Indeed, the finishing touches would have been put on the script on the very day Pearl Harbor was bombed. Uncertainty and apprehension must have been rampant, but the show went on.

The format of the show was simple. Most of the action took place in the Magee’s home at 79 Wistful Vista. A series of visitors would come through the front door, and engage in often hilarious banter. The famous “Closet,” a triumph of sound effects, was chaotically opened hundreds of times and became a part of America’s folklore.

The show aired on Tuesday nights, and on more than one occasion President Roosevelt is said to have scheduled a speech to follow because he knew he would have a ready-made audience. Such was its popularity.

THE SHOW AND THE WAR

“Fibber McGee and Molly” remained on the air from 1935 to 1956. In the period between Pearl Harbor and the official V-J Day of Sept. 2, 1945, it aired 139 times. (There was a summer hiatus.) Of those 139 shows, at least 28 had a theme directly related to the war or contained special material on the subject (e.g., gas rationing).

In addition to full theme shows, virtually every show contained one or more of the following: Remarks by Fibber and/or Molly, usually the latter, worked into the story context.

Remarks by the Jordans (as themselves) directly asking the listeners to do something specific (e.g., buy War Bonds, limit travel, conserve sugar).

Similar remarks by other cast members.

Patriotic musical selections.

Messages from the sponsor, Johnson’s Wax®.

During the war years, the show received Hooper ratings of either first or second each year.

Throughout the war the message was clear. America was at war, the enemy clearly identified, and those on

the home front had obligations. American men and women were dying for their country. They deserved the support of those at home who, in turn, must do their best to support the war effort.

During the war, full shows were devoted, always with humor, to such subjects as: The need for rationing: sugar, gasoline, cigarettes, rubber; Buying War Bonds; The role played by the Women’s Army Corp., Merchant Marines, and Coast Guard; European war refugees; Turning in unused scrap; Women working in men’s jobs on the home front; and many more.

THE PLAYERS

Jim and Marian Jordan were Fibber McGee and Molly.

Fibber, though fiercely patriotic, generally believed that wartime restrictions were meant for the “other guy.” Molly was ever the voice of reason and ultimately prevailed. She dampened Fibber’s misguided attempts at humor with the remarks which became a part of the American lexicon: “‘taint funny Magee.”

HARLOW WILCOX Harlow Wilcox was played by Harlow Wilcox. Like a few other announcers, such as Don Wilson on “The Jack Benny Show,” he not only sold Johnson’s Wax® products, but was a regular character in the program stories. The Johnson Co. allowed his mid-program appearances to become humorous battles between him trying to get in his pitch and the McGees trying to disrupt these efforts.

Wilcox’s efforts, blessed by the sponsor, delivered

some of the most painless commercials on radio with humor but persuasion. He often delivered war messages as part of his serious commercials at the beginning and end of the show. Certainly, he often found a way to build a small commercial into the message.

But why not? Johnson was paying for the air time.

MAYOR LATRIVIA

Played by the inimitable Gale Gordan.

The Mayor was constantly brought to near apoplexy by McGee’s intentional misunderstanding of some remarks. The Mayor, on the show, and Gale Gordan, in real life, joined the Coast Guard.

“DOC” GAMBLE

The doctor delivered some of the most serious remarks about the war of anyone on the program. His acerbic wit was often used to show Fibber that he, too, was subject to wartime restrictions. (Fibber’s unnecessary auto trips to the Elks Club used rubber that was needed for the life raft of a downed fighter pilot.)

“TEENY”

The little girl next door was played by Marian (Molly) Jordan herself. She, too, often supplied childish wisdom about the war.

“How do you think we can keep doing it over there if we don’t do more over here?”

“BEAULAH”

The McGee’s black maid was played (only possible on radio) by a white man, Marlin Hurt.

She frequently mentioned her boyfriend who was in the military and on one occasion eloquently explained the dangers of inflation to McGee.

Trying to do a live radio comedy show two days after Pearl Harbor. Front: Marion Jordan (Molly McGee) and Jim Jordan (Fibber). Back: Phil Leslie and Dan Quinn, the true comic genius of the show. Photo courtesy of Mickey Smith.

THE CHEMISTRY

The success of Fibber and Molly was certainly the result of a combination of several components.

THE WRITING

Primarily the work of Don Quinn, a man with a love of words, a magnificent command of the English language, an irrepressible sense of whimsy, and abiding patriotism.

THE ACTING

The Jordans were wonderfully comedic actors, playing beautifully off one another and delivering Quinn’s lines with just the right touch (as well as enjoying their “fluffs.”) All of this made their serious wartime messages even more effective.

THE SPONSOR

Not fully acknowledged was the role played by the sponsor, Johnson’s Wax®, who gave the writers free rein in developing story lines and subjects. It is doubtful that any commercial radio sponsor contributed more of the contents of a program to the war effort. Yes, that’s “S.C. Johnson, A Family Company.”

There appear to be extant no written records concerning the decisions made by the sponsor to commit the show so thoroughly to the war effort. Without such information, I am left with the conclusion that these were all patriotic Americans, just like millions of others, who had the opportunity and the will to make an extraordinary difference.

It is hard to overestimate the magnificent job done by this team in a time of America’s darkest hours. The ability to convey vital wartime information, to convince the public to share willingly, even enthusiastically, in some of the privations occasioned by rationing and shortages, to be a major part of a bond drive unequalled in the history of this or any country, and to do so in such an entertaining way that the public rated the show in the top five on radio throughout the war was nothing short of genius.

AT THE END

Although the government had issued guidelines concerning messages to be broadcast to the public about war issues, “Fibber McGee and Molly” far exceeded them. Nearly every program contained some war-related message. Sometimes it only amounted to a wisecrack about Hitler; at other times, it was the entire theme of a program.

A message from the Jordans after the war in Octo-

ber 1945 shows their continued commitment to their country and those who defend it. It rings true today.

“The real test of patriotism comes after the bands have stopped playing and the guns have stopped shooting. The guns have stopped shooting folks, but our guys are still in there pitching until they are returned to civilian life. It’s to them we owe victory and it’s to them we owe the maintenance of morale until they do get home. We gave our boys a warm hand when they left. Let’s not give them the cold shoulder now.”

Someone has written: “Old radio shows are not nostalgia pills; they’re time capsules.” I hope you agree.

The author is Barnard Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Pharmacy Administration at the University of Mississippi. During his 37 years on the faculty, he published more than a score of books, including translations into five languages. He is the recipient of many national and international awards, including an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

His book, “How Fibber McGee and Molly Won War II,” is available from the publisher, Bear Mountain Media, Amazon, and Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi.

MEEK SCHOOL 41

RANDALL PINKSTON 2013 SILVER EM RECIPIENT

By Leah Gibson

A

fter more than 30 years as a correspondent with CBS News, Randall Pinkston has moved to a new venue, freelance reporting as a national correspondent for the Al Jazeera America team.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Pinkston, a native of Yazoo City. “It’s invigorating.

“They truly are an international newsgathering operation. None of the networks cover the world the way Al Jazeera does.”

Pinkston worked for the network many Americans consider the gold standard in journalism. He produced more than 7,700 reports for CBS NEWS and WCBS-TV, the network’s flagship station in New York City, on topics that ranged from the Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan to the beginning stages of the trial of George Zimmerman for his role in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. His assignments also included a stint as White House correspondent during the last two years of the administration of President George H. W. Bush.

The Meek School recognized his professional achievement in 2013.

42 MEEK SCHOOL

Pinkston was presented the Sam Talbert Silver Em Award.

“This is the most prestigious honor the Meek School awards journalists who are from the state and/or have worked in the state, and in my instance it’s both,” Pinkston said.

When he covered the war in Afghanistan, Pinkston knew he was in danger, but he said he really did not feel it.

“For the most part, when you’re covering a story you’re trying to find information,” he said. “You’re trying to find someone, where to do your standup, what to write. … I was just doing the things that a reporter does on a daily basis.”

He explained that every now and then they would find themselves in a sticky situation, like the time his crew found themselves in a convoy with an Afghan leader.

“I look out of the window of the vehicle we were traveling in, and I see this big gun aimed in our direction,” Pinkston said. “I see these guys … and all of a sudden the gun goes off, BOOM! “I duck, and then the Afghan guys that we have with us began to laugh, and I say, ‘Why are you laughing? They’re shooting at us.’

“

Everyone doesn’t come into this world with the same opportunities. … We need to try to help those who have the least so they can work towards enjoying the full benefits of American society.

“They say, ‘No, no, no, they are celebrating our arrival.’”

However, Pinkston had reason to be worried that day. Four of the people that his crew had had breakfast with that morning were stopped on the road to Kabul and killed. When he heard the news, Pinkston said he really came to grips with the danger.

Amy Birnbaum, one of the producers who worked with Pinkston during his time at CBS, said he “understands the precision of language. That’s a good reporter.”

Rodney Comrie is another producer at CBS. He worked with Pinkston for at least 15 years.

“I’m one of his biggest admirers because of the love he has for his craft,” Comrie said. “No story is too small and no story is too big. He also taught me about [journalism], like how to treat people.

“Randall always met his deadlines. … He made my life easier. It was a privilege to work with him because he was a guy you could count on.

“He always was focused on getting what was needed to get the story right.”

Birnbaum described him as a gentleman.

“He always has time for people, and he is very smart,” she said.

Because of this, Birnbaum said he was “one of the most recognized reporters that I have met. People always recognized him.”

A key motivator in Pinkston’s life and his career is his love for people.

“One of the ways to make our nation stronger is to do what we can to help individuals realize their full potential,” he said.

“Everyone doesn’t come into this world with the same opportunities. … We need to try to help those who have the least so they can work towards enjoying the full benefits of American society.”

Pinkston approaches his job from a standpoint of what we can do to help other people. Superficial things like money or airtime are not important to him.

Covering stories that inform the public is in the job description of a journalist, no matter where the reporter stands on the issue of how the majority of the people feel.

Journalists have to give the facts.

“With any stories involving issues of civil rights and justice,” Pinkston said, “I obviously have a personal point of view because of where I grew up and the times I grew up in. But as a journalist, I always try to report the facts, and keep my opinion out.”

“Injustice can happen to anyone at anytime,” he said. “So when I was covering the Trayvon Martin story, I learned everything I possibly could about George Zimmerman.

“I learned everything I could about the neighborhood watch program and its protocols. I learned everything I could about the crime profile in that neighborhood and what had happened, and why he became the person to protect that area.

“That was my prime focus.

“I wasn’t that concerned about learning about Trayvon Martin because Trayvon Martin was dead, and we knew at that point that there was never an allegation that Trayvon Martin had a weapon.

“It wasn’t that Zimmerman was using his gun to meet force with force. That never was the issue. As far as I was concerned, whatever Trayvon did or did not do, it did not have anything to do with a deadly weapon.

“I was trying to ferret this out and learn everything I could about Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.”

Pinkston grew up with an understanding of society that the majority of Americans did not have. Indeed, his childhood poverty did not cause him to lack the things he thought really mattered in life: spiritual, psychological and family riches.

“I grew up with people who were elderly and told a lot of stories,” he said.

The other children in the neighborhood in which he grew up had similar economic issues, but many were not as fortunate to have the support that he had.

“These children were not able to enjoy the opportunities that I did later on in life,” he said. “So I’ve always been concerned about people who are still struggling, people who don’t have. That’s just stayed in my head and my heart.”

After graduating from high school, Pinkston went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. There was a radio station on campus, and he worked there. Anyone interested could work there after passing a test and committing to work one hour a day, five times a week.

“I used my hour to play soul music, R&B we called it back in the day,” Pinkston said. “I got my friends to take the other days of the week. We all took pictures and sent them back home.”

Pinkston’s father took the picture his son sent him to the minister of their church. During the next year Pinkston’s father became ill and passed away. After the funeral, the minister asked Pinkston what he was going to do next. He encouraged him to go to a local television station and tell them the Rev. Taylor had sent him.

He did, he was hired, and Pinkston’s career began — first as an announcer on the radio station WJDX-FM, then a year and a half later with 15-minute newscasts. In the process he learned to write news stories, produce newscasts and do rudimentary film editing. He was hired at WLBT News his junior year. By his senior year, he was anchoring five days a week for the 10 o’clock newscast.

That career, beginning in Jackson, has resulted in his becoming one of the outstanding journalists to come out of Mississippi.

The author is a sophomore, broadcast journalism major from Starkville, Mississippi.

MEEK SCHOOL 43

THE STUDENT MEDIA CENTER SINCE 2009 WHERE THE REAL WORLD OF JOURNALISM MEETS THE CLASSROOM

By Ronnie Agnew

T Lacey Russell, Daily Mississippian editorin-chief for 2014-2015, and DM news editor Logan Kirkland cover the destruction of a tornado in Tupelo, Mississippi, Tuesday, April 29, 2014. Photo by Mikki K. Harris

44 MEEK SCHOOL

he student journalists mobilized quickly when they received word of the tragedy.

An elementary school principal and her young son had been killed in Oxford, and the police manhunt for the killer took them down an unlikely path. News teams from neighboring cities converged on Oxford, cranking out stories as details trickled in on the breaking story. Ultimately, the woman’s older son would be charged with the death of his mother and stepbrother.

As news teams arrived from Memphis, Tupelo and Jackson, they were joined by another media group aggressively covering a violent tragedy more common in bigger towns far removed from bucolic Oxford. They were student journalists from Ole Miss’ Student Media

Center, placed in a situation where there was much more emphasis placed on their journalism than their status as students headed to English class.

The story took them into the classroom of life, where the unexpected happens and journalists are compelled to be there to fill in the blanks for a public with around-the-clock expectations for news updates.

The students working in the Meek School’s S. Gale Denley Student Media Center were ready: A story was first posted on thedmonline.com. A crew from NewsWatch 99 was dispatched to the scene. Rebel Radio on-air personalities gave constant updates. And The Daily Mississippian staff, with the story breaking off the printing cycle, delivered comprehensive coverage for the next print edition.

It was the kind of story requiring the students to put into place all of the multimedia tools that have

become the standard in newspapers and television stations throughout the nation. And it stands as an example of how an idea first pitched in 1979 is today training young journalists to staff rapidly evolving professional newsrooms, which are in a furious race to keep pace with the public’s indefatigable yet fragmented appetite for news and information.

The Meek School’s Student Media Center has thrust this aggressive group of young journalists into the newsroom of the future, into a digital space that includes all segments of media that now define the wildly volatile expectations of the modern newsroom.

When it was dedicated in 2004, the S. Gale Denley Student Media Center was ahead of its time and one of few of its type among the hundreds of journalism programs across the country. And today, where confident freshmen sit alongside seasoned seniors as newscasts are produced, news stories are crafted, and digital delivery of news commands center stage, the SMC is still cutting edge, providing students with an incredible media laboratory to put into practice what is taught in the classroom.

“The kind of opportunity our students have here, I don’t know of any other place offering those opportunities,” said Pat Thompson, the center’s director, whose resumé is replete with big-time journalism jobs, including stints at The Washington Post and San Jose Mercury News, among others. “I love what I’m doing here. I’ve worked in some of the top newsrooms in the country. I’m teaching them all of the things that I’ve learned.”

Thompson presides over a Student Media Center that looks the part of a news café with a purpose, an inviting place that could be confused with a Starbucks, save for one important fact: The determined student journalists place far more emphasis on the work that has to be done than aesthetics. During the busy part of the day, their faces take on the frantic look of journalists fighting the battle with an unforgiving clock as deadlines loom.

Journalism programs are not immune to the disruptive innovation issues that have decimated some of America’s top media institutions, and there are preliminary talks about reducing the frequency of the DM. With the newspaper, TV station and digital operations producing content five days a week, the business side dictates that the programs still have to pay for themselves. And currently, it is still the newspaper’s revenue that helps Thompson fund the other parts of the SMC, which includes the school’s robust, 400-page yearbook. But as jobs in journalism shrink, student majors here are going against the trend. There are almost 500 print and broadcast majors, and more than 500 majoring in the relatively new area of Integrated Marketing Communications, an intense media marketing program that rests under the Meek School of Journalism umbrella. Bringing the various pieces together can be a challenge, particularly because the center relies on students who have to balance demanding hands-on work with equally demanding classes required in the journalism curriculum.

Just like the pros making their living in newsrooms, there are stressful moments when professional differences emerge in the converged operation. In the news business, regardless of whether it’s the learning environment of student media, passionate discourse on the issues of the day is common and almost encouraged to get the best out of an idea or a story. In the Student Media Center, the students are exposed to it all, and not ashamed to talk about it. They see it as part of the education they are receiving at Ole Miss and as preparation for the future. Most have an expectation of working in digital newsrooms that are as much focused on social media and visual journalism as the written and spoken word. They give Thompson and her team credit for getting them ready and providing a guiding hand gleaned through the experience they’ve learned in their own professional careers.

“It’s natural for print and broadcast people to butt heads, but we know that if we don’t work together, it’s going to hurt what we’re trying to accomplish here and ultimately our careers,” said Adam Ganucheau, a senior from Hazlehurst, Mississippi, and editor of The Daily Mississippian for 2013-2014. “At the SMC, we know that. We’re learning a broad range of skills that I don’t think people were learning 10 years ago. Without a doubt, we’re ready for whatever digital newsroom we might see in the future.”

Ganucheau, who has served in a number of newsroom capacities, said he’s worked to bring more of a digital urgency to the newspaper’s operations, and he has plans to aggressively push and improve the media center’s iPhone app, which is available, but has not been marketed. He’s gratified to see that thedmonline. com is reaching an audience outside the university community, as evidenced by a spike in unique visitors to the website. One popular Web story, which in October propelled thedmonline.com to 422,445 page views, involved the controversial decision by the university to change the name of Colonel Rebel to Mr. Ole Miss. That month, more than 186,000 unique visitors came to the site, which was significantly higher than a typical month. Digital traffic also spiked when thedmonline.com reported on insensitive outbursts at a campus theater performance of “The Laramie Project,” a play chronicling the 1998 torturing and killing of gay Wyoming resident Matthew Shephard.

The story, which led the university’s chancellor to order sensitivity training, garnered national interest and reporting originating from journalists in the Student Media Center was picked up by major news organizations outside of Mississippi.

Will Norton, dean of the Meek School, looks at the Student Media Center with pride. He remembers the 34-year-old conversation at his home with the late S. Gale Denley, then an associate professor in the journalism school, about leading the SMC. Norton noticed back then that broadcast majors were outnumbering print students and knew he had to do something. The broadcast program had no money and no equipment.

It didn’t have basic infrastructure to get a signal out of Farley Hall to broadcast TV programming. After Norton approached several people, Denley was the

only person who would take the job – and he was only able to do so after Norton persuaded top university administrators that he would hire from within and that accreditation was at risk if no action was taken.

The larger point, according to Norton, was that there was student demand.

Long removed from those days, Norton still sees potential for growth of the SMC. But he is pleased with the center’s direction and director.

“Pat has been able to break down a lot of barriers,” he said. “And I think more barriers will come down as Pat develops her team. I wish we had more TV news programming. I wish we had more news on radio. I wish we had an Oxford news program. Eventually, someone is going to start a news program in Oxford.”

Norton is a scrappy dean, known to fight for his students and for the program. In the Student Media Center, he wants to create a place that prepares students for whatever they choose to do once they leave the Ole Miss campus. With major downsizing at America’s newspapers, fewer media jobs in general, and tough competition from other multiple platform journalism programs, he firmly believes that skills students learn are transferable to a number of professions. He is convinced Ole Miss has one of the top journalism programs in the South, if not the country.

The combination of print, broadcast, digital and visual journalism gives him the confidence the graduates the SMC is producing can walk into any newsroom, dot. com, or broadcast entity ready to immediately contribute. For those students seeking other opportunities, he believes the SMC has more than prepared them for a successful future.

“No matter whether or not you go to work in media, being able to write or speak well is a marketable skill,” he said. “I view journalism education as not being a trade school. No matter what, this is great preparation for people. We’re teaching people skills that can be used in any industry.”

Lisa McNeece, S. Gale Denley’s daughter and advertising director of the Calhoun County Journal, the paper once owned by her father, agrees that Thompson has built something special. She says her late father would be proud.

“He would be so pleased with the continuity of the center and its focus to educate student journalists in a real-world setting,” she said. “He was always a teacher who believed students learned best by doing.

“His association with the media center and students kept our newspaper (The Journal) on the cutting edge. If The Daily Mississippian got Quark, we got Quark. As a matter of fact, five or six years ago when we started our newspaper on Twitter, we asked an Ole Miss journalism student to help us get it started. (The Student Media Center) has embraced the change and evolution of new media. How lucky the students are to be in a working environment like this.”

The author, a 1984 English and Radio/TV graduate, is executive director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting and former executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger.

MEEK SCHOOL 45

THE FUTURE OF

JOURNALISM

46 MEEK SCHOOL

By Deb Wenger

T

alk about a tough assignment: Offer a view of journalism’s future in 1,000 words or less. So, what better way to boil the information down than with one of the latest (and most hated?) story forms – the “listicle.” Here, a la BuzzFeed, are the Top 5 Predictions

for the Future of Journalism.

1. Producing and selling journalism will continue to be profitable.

Despite the “journalism is dead” headlines, billions of dollars flow through news media companies and into the hands of the people who own and work for them. Not every journalism grad will get a job in the profession, but those who are talented and passionate will certainly have that option far into the future. People want credible information they can use to make decisions in their lives. They want information that makes their lives more interesting, too. Journalists often provide that information, and if it’s valuable enough, people will pay for it.

2. Journalists will acknowledge that the audience is not made up of the great unwashed, but rather a vast group of partners in the newsgathering process. There’s still a lot of arrogance in journal-

ism — still a lot of people who believe only they know what news is and that anything written as a “listicle” has to be worthless. But, that will change. Journalists will eventually realize that the job is not about giving people what they want vs. what they need; this is about respecting the audience and understanding their value and power. It’s about providing that audience with relevant content in the form and on the platform that works best for them. The ubiquitous nature of audience analytics and other forms of feedback will continue to help journalists in their efforts to better serve the audience.

3. Changes in the technology used to gather and distribute information will continue to affect the practice of journalism. It really started

with Gutenberg, didn’t it? Technology put books into the hands of more people than ever, which helped them to learn more than ever before. Today, mobile devices are now significant drivers of news consumption, especially among younger demographics. Television audiences are shrinking, but online video viewing is exploding.

Wearables may be the next big thing for news organizations to leverage, or it may be something that’s yet to be invented. Regardless, successful journalists will be watching what’s happening with tech trends and will be thinking about how to apply them to journalism.

4. The definition of journalism and news outlets will continue to expand. There’s a John Cole cartoon from 2009 that shows a future

in which a journalism awards ceremony includes, “And this year’s Pulitzer Prize for investigative tweeting goes to…” The question now

is, how much longer will that be a joke? For many people, Twitter is as much of a news service as the Associated Press. YouTube is their network news with millions of hours worth of video appearing daily.

Foundation-supported news providers, like Kaiser Health News, or non-profit news sources created by individuals such as MinnPost are all part of the new mix, along with Bleacher Report, Deadspin, and yes, BuzzFeed.

5. Ongoing disruption of the profession will mean ongoing criticism of the profession as new story forms and delivery methods emerge.

Interestingly, much of the criticism of journalism innovation seems to come from journalists themselves. We don’t have to go back very far in time to find scathing comments about The Huffington Post (yes, The Huffington Post that won a Pulitzer for National Reporting in 2012) in traditional news media. When a media outlet tries something new, whether it’s aggregating content or experimenting with native advertising, the attacks most often come first from within the profession itself. This will not change, but innovation will continue.

What does all this mean for journalism education? American philosopher Eric Hoffer once wrote that, “The only way to predict the future is to have the power to shape the future.”

In many ways, journalism educators are in precisely that position.

We have the power to prepare students for a future such as the one described. We can foster an understanding of the business of journalism — the role of advertising and other revenue sources, the need for branding and the ability to analyze audience data, for example. We can do a better job of promoting learning about technology and its impact on the profession, we can push students to keep the audience top of mind and to explore new ways of reaching new segments of that audience. And we can do that while we continue to preserve important foundational principles such as accuracy, fairness and accountability and to emphasize all of the essential components of good storytelling.

Finally, we need to keep learning about and trying to define the journalism of the future ourselves. To quote Hoffer once again: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

The author, associate professor and undergraduate journalism sequence head, is a 17-year broadcast news veteran. Before her academic appointments, Wenger was assistant news director at WFLA-TV in Tampa, Florida. Wenger conducts research in the area of multimedia and provides multimedia training to newsrooms throughout the nation. She was awarded an undergraduate degree from what is now known as Minnesota State University where she graduated summa cum laude. Her master’s degree is from University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

MEEK SCHOOL 47

GRADUATE

profiles

FRED ANKLAM F

By Logan Kirkland

red Anklam, the senior night editor of USA Today, grew up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and went to the United States Military Academy to study engineering, but he quickly realized it was a field he did not want to pursue.

Anklam said he knew about the small journalism department at Ole Miss. It had a great reputation, plus it was one of the fun schools in the South.

Anklam entered the university as a transfer student in July 1974 and immediately started working at The Daily Mississippian.

“The first thing I did was go to the DM,” Anklam said.

The DM seemed to be constantly covering the Watergate hearings.

“It was a time when interest turned to journalism,” Anklam said.

He found it fascinating to be able to talk to important people.

For instance, he wrote a story on coed dormitories and opposite sex visitation policies at each of the SEC schools, and was able to talk to the chancellor and the college board and got to see many different institutions.

“I was treated like an equal and grew up fast,” Anklam said.

In school Anklam always challenged himself by taking classes with teachers who were well known on campus.

“It was a lot of fun challenging myself,” Anklam said.

Anklam recalled that in Jere Hoar’s feature writing class, students were required to write one story a week and to submit them for publication.

48 MEEK SCHOOL

“He told us, ‘Why are you studying journalism if you don’t want to be published?’”

Anklam said.

Another class that was challenging, Anklam said, was Will Norton’s advanced reporting class.

“We were assigned a beat on campus and had to write two stories a week,” he said.

Norton, now dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, said Anklam “wrote one great story after another.”

Anklam said the expectations of both Hoar and Norton in their classes really prepared him for the journalistic world.

“Oh, Dr. Hoar’s class,” Anklam said. “He’s a wonderful man. He didn’t mean to terrify us, but he did.”

Anklam said many top journalists graduated from the program at Ole Miss and benefited because of the classes at the university.

“We all did very well in the real world because of the curriculum,” Anklam said.

The one person in the department who had the most energy was Norton, Anklam said.

“If anyone left me prepared for the newsroom, Dr. Norton was the one,” he said.

Anklam said they both kept him competitive and working hard.

“I still have a great relationship with both of them,” he said.

Anklam became much more serious during his junior year. He realized that The Daily Mississippian was a real service to the students and each story he covered was a learning experience.

On one assignment, he interviewed Dean Frank Moak. After he left the interview, he realized he had not asked several vital questions. He went back, asked the questions and started writing the story. Then he realized

that he still had more questions that needed to be answered.

“It was very embarrassing for me,” Anklam said. “It was a good learning experience.”

Shortly after graduating from Ole Miss, Anklam worked at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, where he and Nancy Weaver were the lead reporters on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize.

“I thought I did not have a chance in a small paper in Mississippi,” Anklam said. “I can’t explain to you how exciting it was.

Anklam said he and Weaver covered in depth the problems in public education in Mississippi. They spent more than half a year traveling through all parts of the state in order to gather information.

“We were shining a light on what was really going on,” Anklam said. “It never entered my mind that our reporting would win a Pulitzer Prize.”

Anklam said Weaver was masterful at pulling the information out of sources and organizing it effectively.

“We went out and did basic reporting,” Anklam said.

Charles Overby, executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger at that time, said Anklam has the intangibles. He gets along with people, is hard working and understands the big picture.

“Fred has this great ability to be a nice guy, but a tough reporter,” Overby said. “He knows the right questions to ask.”

Overby, now the chairman of the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, entered that package of education articles in the category of public service that helped achieve public reform.

Overby said he remembers the excitement

Photo by Jud McCrehin

when they found out about the Pulitzer.

“I’ll never forget it,” Overby said. “I’ll treasure that time for the rest of my life.”

“We were jumping on the desks in the newsroom,” Anklam said.

Anklam said the Pulitzer award “was a nice validation of what we are doing at Ole Miss.”

Norton said he happened to be in Jackson when he heard the news of the Pulitzer, but he could not stay because he had to be back on campus. Looking back, he wishes he had stayed.

“A couple of days later, I got a call from Fred,” Norton said. “This is how he is such a good guy. He had won the Pulitzer, but he took time and called and thanked me for a class that he said had helped him win the Pulitzer.”

Norton said that tells you just how nice and selfless he is.

“He uses good things in his life to make things good in other people’s lives,”

Norton said.

“But it’s not just that he’s a good guy,” he said. “He’s an exceptional journalist.”

Overby said Anklam is an example for all Ole Miss students.“Fred’s success shows that anybody that goes to Ole Miss and works hard can be successful on a national scale,” he said.

“Of all the students we’ve had in journalism, he’s one I feel very close to because of the way he just took hold but didn’t let success go to his head,” Norton said.

“He used his reporting ability for the betterment of his community. He’s the reason they won the Pulitzer,” he said.

Norton said Anklam raised the respect of the school.

“It’s persistence that really makes someone good at something,” Norton said. “I think you see that persistence in Fred.”

“You can be a great journalist and never win an award,” Anklam said. “Learn to push yourself.

“Be aware of the impact your work can have on people. If you can communicate effectively, you can do anything.”

Anklam said it is important to learn a little about everything because the more you can do yourself, the more you can do to promote your work.

“There was no USA Today when I was in college. That wasn’t an option,” Anklam said. “You don’t know what is going to be out there.”

Anklam said he loves working with USA Today because of the communication he has with people on the national level.

“You sometimes forget how many people will be affected,” Anklam said. “If you apply yourself seriously to journalism, you will find it a most rewarding career or profession.”

It’s the field he wanted to pursue.

The author is a Meek School senior, journalism major with a minor in Spanish. He is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

MEEK SCHOOL 49

GRADUATE

profiles

RENIE ANDERSON

“

I walked through every open door professionally and took every opportunity I could. When a door was open, I asked myself, ‘What am I willing to do to the best of my ability?’

By Bridget Quinn

W

hen one mentions Ole Miss alumni, football players usually are the first to come to mind — Archie and Eli Manning and Michael Oher, among others.

Few think of Renie Anderson (’97), senior vice president, sponsorship and partnership management for the National Football League. She is a major player.

Anderson was born and raised in Morganfield, Kentucky, and was graduated with a journalism degree with an emphasis in public relations. She has worked for the NFL eight years.

Joanna Hunter, director of corporate communications for the NFL, said all the organizations with which Anderson has completed deals are blue chip.

Of the 26 sponsors she manages, Bridgestone was her first. She has signed 13 more new sponsors and 12 renewals.

“It is my role to make sure all the sponsors have an opportunity to leverage the brand of the NFL in order to reach their goals,” Anderson said. “Each sponsor’s goals are really different and really specific.

“We also want to make sure we are reaching our fans and growing.”

Hunter said, “Companies want to be associated with the NFL because Anderson convinces them they should be. She develops and articulates creative and innovative ways for brands to leverage their relationship with the NFL that is a win for both the sponsor and the NFL.” Anderson said the NFL ultimately looks at a company and figures out if it would be a grand fit, and if the potential sponsor has the same values and goals.

50 MEEK SCHOOL

“We look at partnership like any relationship, like a marriage or when you are dating someone,” she said.

“We ask, ‘What do we have in common?’ … We look at what we are together.”

The goal is to make sure the NFL can differentiate a sponsor from its competitors in the marketplace and from the other partners in the NFL family.

“Our sponsors have very different reasons why they are with us,” Anderson said, “and if we do not understand those differences, we cannot help them reach and exceed those goals. We don’t want them to just maintain specific goals, we want them to exceed every year.”

Each day is different for Anderson, but all are busy. Some days are spent entirely in meetings. Others are spent working with the CEO and his staff.

“My typical day is like taking a drink out of a fire hose,” she said.

Hunter said, “Renie always has been the first to raise her hand to take the lead or take on more, setting a great example.

“She proves that hard work can pay off. She is a model for many aspiring executives showing that doing your job well with integrity can advance your career.”

At Ole Miss, Anderson was president of Pi Beta Phi sorority, involved in student body, wrote for The Daily Mississippian, had a public relations internship, was part of the Chancellor’s leadership class and was involved in Reformed University Fellowship.

She was passionate about sports, going to all the home football and basketball games, but she really never thought about working in sports.

“I thought working in sports was like Bob Costas or Jerry McGuire,” she said.

After graduation she moved to California, hoping to be a great novelist some day.

“I walked through every open door professionally and took every opportunity I could,” she said. “When a door was open, I asked myself, ‘What am I willing to do to the best of my ability?’”

Anderson could not find a writing job, so she went to a temp agency where she was a receptionist answering phones. She knew someone who knew David Baker, the commissioner of the Arena Football League. She needed a job and he needed an assistant, so she worked for Baker.

“My first day of work I was 22 years old,” Anderson said.

“He said, ‘I need you to balance my checkbook, pick up my dry cleaning and call NFL owners to see if they want to buy arena football teams.’

“I looked at him like, ‘Hmm what should I do first today?’

“He said ‘Fake it till you make it, kid.’ And I did.”

Anderson worked there nine years, learning about the business of sports: making T-shirts, selling tickets and video games, and learning how to sell teams.

“Renie is focused, a very driven tornado in a compact body,” Baker said. “She has a passion to succeed, and she has a great influence and understanding of people.

“While she was working for me she grew as an individual. … She grew personally and in understanding of the business.”

Anderson found her best skill set is sponsorship sales and activation, so she went to the National Football League.

“At the NFL, we are never satisfied with where we are,” she said.

“The key for the NFL is we don’t have to be the first to do something, but when we do something, we have to make sure we are the best.”

Hunter said Anderson “exemplifies the best of the NFL. She leads by example -- when times are uncertain, she keeps her focus and the focus of her team on work and moving us forward.”

“She is the ultimate team player,” Hunter said. “She celebrates her team and gives credit to those doing the work.”

The NFL has 185 million fans and is seen as America’s favorite sport.

When Anderson attended Ole Miss, she spent a lot of time in Farley Hall and credits the university for helping with her current success.

“I had a dream in journalism, and now I sell sponsorships,” she said. “There is absolutely no connection there, but the way I was taught how to tell a story, in a clear concise way has helped me, because in sales you are telling a story.

“I love to tell stories, and I do that every day. I tell stories as I sell the businesses I work for with our clients.”

For Anderson, football is not only in the fall, but year-round.

“There really is no off season for the NFL,” she said. “When the season is over, the day after the Super Bowl we have 32 teams that believe they can win the Super Bowl the next season. We are not just September through February. We are 365 days, 52 weeks a year.”

In addition to Anderson’s career, family is important. She is a wife and mother of two daughters, living in Darien, Connecticut. She spends a lot of time at ballet lessons and swim practices. During her free time, she loves to read, write and watch movies, but most of all she takes naps — every chance she gets.

“She is proud of where she comes from — growing up on a farm in Kentucky and especially the years she spent at Ole Miss — and

Photo courtesy of the NFL

appreciative of those who have had a positive influence on her and her career,” Hunter said.

Her advice to college students working to achieve her level of success in the sports industry is to find something they are interested in and be good at it.

“Lots of people are fans of sports,” she said, “but you need to find what you are passionate for. At the NFL, we are a business, we run like a business, and it takes a village to run.

“You don’t have to have a sports marketing brain to work in sports. You can take your skill set and transition it to the world of sports. Be an expert, and experiences will arise.”

Baker says Anderson is an excellent role model for women and men.

“It is so much fun to watch her grow,” Baker said. “She is going to make a difference. She will continue to grow as a wife, mother and professional.

“There is going to be a lot more ahead. This is just the beginning.”

The author is a 2014 Meek School graduate from Alpharetta, Georgia.

MEEK SCHOOL 51

GRADUATE

profiles

TOM BEARDEN T

By Jonece Dunigan

om Bearden, a retired PBS NewsHour Denver-based correspondent, has reported from 11 countries and visited 68.

He has hometowns around the world: Fort Belvoir, Virginia.; Captieux, France; and Okinawa, Japan, just to name a few.

Lt. Col. Norman C. Bearden, his father, fought in three wars in the Army. Although being raised on military bases around the world meant friends came and went, Bearden believes the lifestyle has its perks.

Every memory is like a souvenir of the places he has been, and the multicultural childhood along with his military family experiences have provided a background for a successful journalism career.

“It gives you the ability to talk to anybody about anything [when covering stories concerning the military],” Bearden said. “I know what their rank means. I know who they are. I know what their jobs were about.

I have seen people who have no experience [in the military] and it’s sometimes quite awkward for them because they don’t know the lifestyle.”

Bearden’s first choice for professional study was architecture. He fell in love with the precision and hands-on aspects of the occupation after taking a few classes in it during high school in New Jersey.

He was persuaded to do something in a more journalistic direction once he realized that architecture requires a knack for math.

After transferring to Fort Campbell High School in Kentucky, an English teacher encouraged him to write editorials for the high school newspaper during his senior year.

“It seemed like a natural thing,” Bearden said, “because I learned how to type because my mom signed me up for typing classes. It was the best thing she could’ve done for me.”

52 MEEK SCHOOL

Bearden enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1965 after he learned that he qualified as an in-state student because his father’s home of record was in Port Gibson. He did not know what Hotty Toddy meant, recognize the school colors or know that it had a tradition to shave the heads of freshmen.

He considered his six-year stint at the university to be a relief from frequent moves.

“It was a welcomed change because it was the longest I had ever been [in one place], besides the standard tour of duty, which is three years,” Bearden said.

Bearden kept his hands busy during his college career. He was the student manager of the campus radio station, WCBH, for three years. He traveled to Chicago and shook hands with Walter Cronkite as he received two journalism awards from Sigma Delta Chi. He worked part time as a disc jockey at WSUH in Oxford, learning the art of “rip-and-read” news.

A disc jockey had to rip the hourly news summary off the AP or UPI wire and read it directly on air without editing it, because there wasn’t time to do anything else.

Bearden said it was all part of a juggling job.

“One had little choice if, like me, you worked the morning shift and were the only person there playing the records, running the commercials, and reading a five-minute newscast at the top of every hour.”

During graduate school, he shot 16-millimeter film while reporting for Ed Meek’s Public Information Office. He spent the summers of 1966,’67,’69 and ’70 as a radio and TV announcer and a television audio tech in the NBC affiliate WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi.

He did his first five-minute television newscast at WLBT, broadcasting live on televisions across Mississippi.

“It was both exciting and terrifying,” Bearden said, “and just like at the radio

stations, I was the only one working that newscast. It was Saturday afternoon, and the news department didn’t have anybody on duty. They only worked evening newscasts on weekends.”

Bearden earned his Bachelor of Science in journalism in 1969 and a Master of Arts in radio-TV and an ROTC commission as an Army second lieutenant in 1971.

He almost graduated with a full-time job at WLBT, but the person he was replacing decided to stay. Suddenly thrown into the job market, Bearden frantically sent resumes to every television station in the region.

In May 1971, he landed a job as a reporter and anchor at WLBT’S competitor WJTV in Jackson.

His career took a brief detour when he fulfilled his active duty obligation to the military by attending the Signal Officer Basic Course in Fort Gordon, Georgia. He returned to WJTV in January 1972 and worked until that summer, when he entered the Memphis market and took a job at WHBQ-TV as a reporter. He anchored the five and six o’clock news and worked as an assignment editor.

“It has a thankless job,” Bearden said.

“When things go right, he or she doesn’t get any credit. When things go wrong, he or she gets all the blame.”

He met and married Ruth Ann during that time, and they have two daughters, Katie and Emily.

Bearden ventured into the Rockies in the spring of 1978 as an anchor and reporter for KMGH-TV Denver, where he won a regional Emmy for investigative reporting and awards from Sigma Delta Chi, the Associated Press and the Denver Press Club.

Bearden joined the “MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour,” now renamed “The PBS NewsHour,” in 1985.

“He’s a terrific journalist and a credit to the people at Ole Miss who taught him how

“

The best advice I can give somebody trying to break into broadcasting is to get a job, any job, while you’re still in college. Even an unpaid job. Volunteer, if you have to.

to be one,” said Linda Winslow, executive producer of the show. “He’s had a piece of every major news story that has occurred … in the past twenty-plus years.”

While at KMGH Bearden reported from the front lines of the conflict between the Sandinistas and the Contras in Nicaragua in 1983. At “NewsHour” Bearden covered the Mexico City earthquake in 1985, followed by natural disasters, such as hurricanes Andrew and Katrina.

Although the workdays wore on for sometimes 22 hours, six days at a time, Bearden said, “It was exciting. It never felt like a job to me because nothing was routine.”

When he was not reporting on national stories, he learned the art of storytelling while doing long-form or mini-documentary reports about public policy. Brian Gill, a cameraman who worked with Bearden for 16 years, said Bearden had a natural talent for making topics such as commercial aviation and science into stories people would hold close to their hearts.

“He is able to get to the crux of what’s important in anything,” Gill said. “He can present things in a way that makes sense so the viewers benefit.”

Bearden was intrigued by the idea of the “seven basic plots,” an idea created by British novelist Christopher Booker in 1994, which included literary plots such as “Overcoming the Monster” and “Rags to Riches” stories like Cinderella. Bearden adopted Booker’s

model to journalism—that there are also seven basic news stories. Those might include the infamous “if it bleeds, it leads” category—local traffic accidents, house fires, and murders. Another basic story topic would be natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Then there are social issues pieces likes gay rights, and public policy stories, with immigration as one example.

During a story about climate change, he reported how the United States Coast Guard collaborated with scientists on the U.S.C.G Healey in the Arctic Ocean north of Barrow, Alaska. It is part of the code Bearden works by: there may be only seven basic stories, but there are many different ways to tell them.

“That’s Journalism 101,” Bearden said.

“You find a way to make an audience want to watch that piece. But you have to be careful that you don’t distort the facts in making it a good story.”

Bearden is a good storyteller. During one of his 13 trips to cover the BP oil spill, he bumped into what he categorized as a “disturbing series of events.” The camerman was arrested because they took pictures of a refinery, which local authorities considered a crime. Policemen blocked public roads allegedly on orders of BP. Despite the obstacles, Bearden was able to negotiate with the authorities to get the job done.

“He went directly to who’s in charge,” Gill said. “He felt that we should have access and established a communication to get access. A different person who is not willing to com-

promise wouldn’t be able to get access.”

After 27 years with “PBS NewsHour,” Bearden retired during the summer of 2012 as a decorated veteran of the journalism industry. Some of his documentaries with PBS won him awards from the National Press Club, two Cine Golden Eagles and a national Emmy nomination. Another prize he received from the industry was the boatload of frequent flyer miles he now uses to take his wife, children and three grandchildren to exotic places they would not be able to see otherwise.

He still has the anchorman’s voice and continues shooting photos and videos. He believes that a future journalist’s best preparation for the work world is to start gaining experience early.

“The best advice I can give somebody trying to break into broadcasting,” Bearden said, “is to get a job, any job, while you’re still in college. Even an unpaid job. Volunteer, if you have to.

“You need to have some call letters on your resumé to even be considered, and you have to be pretty good at it, and that takes practice.

“The campus radio station at Ole Miss helped me practice my craft, often just through repetition.”

“One needs actual experience to get a decent job.”

The author, a 2014 Meek School graduate, is a beat reporter for the Decatur (Ala.) Daily.

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profiles

HAROLD BURSON

By Mickey Brazeal

R

ockwell Corp. had a shiny new helicopter. This was 1953, when a helicopter was an impressive thing to have. Their ad guy, Bill Marsteller, figured it was worth some press coverage. So he reached out to some public relations professionals. Several of them.

Harold Burson was the one who got there first. He had it all figured out. Harold always gets there first. He always has it all figured out. Impressed, Marsteller talked him into a merger, and Burson-Marsteller was born.

The agencies stayed together until the giant Y&R bought them both. But their paths quickly diverged. Marsteller Advertising grew gradually into a middle-sized agency, focused on the less lucrative field of business-to-business advertising. Burson-Marsteller exploded into an international giant, quickly becoming the biggest in the world. It became so dominant that Y&R was willing to purchase the Marsteller agency in order to be able to buy Burson-Marsteller.

Harold Burson was born in Memphis in 1921. He got into Ole Miss at age 15 and quickly became a force on the student newspaper. He got a reporter’s job in Memphis and then went to WWII as a combat engineer. But he never stopped writing. His coverage of the Nuremberg trials is still seen as their definitive history. When he came back from the army, he started a PR firm in New York.

The cliché about Harold Burson is that he is “the single most influential public relations practitioner in this century.” Which led IBM’s communications senior vice president to ask, “Which century?” It’s a pale descriptor for a genuinely revolutionary entrepreneur.

PR was not so prestigious a profession when he entered the scene.

It was focused on building awareness of your company or your product. On the company side, it was a middle-management function. Burson saw it more strategically. What are the values you want

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to be known for? What do people think of you now? How do we get from here to there? Suddenly it wasn’t so much about your publicity as about your identity — to your customers, your community, your employees, your regulators. In company after company, Burson became a close advisor to the CEO, helping senior management to manage that firm’s reputation the way they managed operations and revenues and human resources. Today everybody thinks that way.

Burson showed them how.

He saw things in public relations that few others could see. One was the centrality of corporate behavior. There are two parts to a reputation, he would preach: how you communicate and how you behave as a corporation. The more important one is how you behave. You don’t earn a reputation by meeting the minimum requirements. Or by ignoring everything except “building shareholder value.” You have to be a lot better than you absolutely have to be.

Another was the idea that relationships are worth the sacrifices it takes to keep them. When public relations people meet, they say, “So who are you working for now?” But Burson had hundreds of employees who stuck with him for 20 years or more. His ability to forge lasting personal relationships created a culture and built a mighty organization.

Burson-Marsteller’s offices became schools for the emerging doctrines of strategy-driven public relations, turning young people with marketing skills or journalism skills into finished public relations professionals. Some of them moved up, and some of them moved on, and for decades now, an extraordinary share of public relations agencies and the public affairs departments of large institutions are led by Burson-Marsteller alumni.

Detractors (there are always detractors) say that Burson-Marsteller accepted some unlikeable clients — an embattled African government, an eco-villain and the like. Two things to understand: First, Burson did not always accept the conventional wisdom about who’s

a villain and who is not. And second, his service to many of those clients seems to have been getting the people at the top to understand what the world requires of its citizens — what you have to change to earn the reputation you need. Somehow, this message cuts through more when it’s coming from Harold Burson, and not just the United Nations.

You’d have to be a fool to try to re-tell a Harold Burson anecdote.

He hones a story until it gleams like a blade, and if you change a single word, it’s not as good. But there’s one that Ole Miss alums need to know, and that’s the story of Burson and the confederate flags.

Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat summoned Burson to say, we have to do something about the Confederate flags that Rebel fans wave during football games. The whole country saw them on TV. It was offensive to African-Americans, and damaging to the university’s reputation. It cost the university students, prestigious faculty and alliances with other universities.

Now, it’s not all of us and it’s not about everything, but there are people in Mississippi who are kind of attached to their traditions.

Not easily talked out of them. Burson’s task would not be simple.

Burson thought about it for a long time. What matters, he decided, is not how you say it, but who this message comes from. So he went to the football coach. Coach was quick to tell him those flags had cost him many a promising recruit. They made it tough to be competitive at the highest level.

“It’s you who’s got to tell people to stop,” Burson told him. And the coach took maybe a few deep breaths. But he stepped up and did it. And the fans took care of the rest.

Public relations agencies, says Burson, now compete with law firms, accounting firms, management consultants, HR consultants, and advertising agencies as advisors to the senior management of large companies and institutions. All of them help to build shareholder value. But, of all those advisors, the public relations agency is the only one whose primary focus is the public interest.

What he doesn’t say is who made that happen.

More than anyone else in the world, Burson made that happen.

If any alumnus can make a university proud, it is Harold Burson.

The author is professor and leader of the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He worked for 28 years as an advertising agency creative — the last 10 as executive creative director of a large Chicago agency. Before joining the Roosevelt faculty, he taught at Northwestern University and at the Stuart Graduate School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Photo by Ed Meek

MEEK SCHOOL 55

RON FRANKLIN C

By Kayleigh Skinner

onsidered by many as the voice of college football, Ron Franklin is one of Ole Miss’ most successful graduates.

Through hard work and preparation, Franklin went from a sports director of several small stations to one of the faces of ESPN College Football Primetime.

The Mississippi native attended University High School and chose UM because of the connections he made with the university during high school.

These connections included a close friendship with former chancellor Robert Khayat and Warner Alford, former athletic director and later director of alumni affairs.

“I think he has been a great representative of Ole Miss,” Khayat said. “He has a wonderful voice which enabled him to become the best sports announcer in America.”

Franklin intended to join Alford on the football team, but a series of concussions caused a blood clot and cut his dream short. However, he was able to channel his passion for sports into broadcasting.

Franklin began working at WSUH in Oxford as a disc jockey. He worked the morning shift at the station, attending classes during the day, and returning at night to create the station’s commercials.

With the encouragement of a helpful mentor, Franklin decided to apply to small television stations to secure a job after graduation. “[My mentor said] what you need to do since you have no television experience is send out some resumés to some really small markets and see if you don’t get a bite,” Franklin said.

He did get a bite. In1965 he was hired to work at a local news station in Roswell, New Mexico. For two years he stayed at the station

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to learn the ins and outs of the business, and that work paid off.

In 1967 he was named sports director at a station in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“He had a great talent, he had a great voice, and he took that talent and multiplied it,” Alford said.

After four years, he was noticed by larger stations in Houston, Texas, and accepted another sports director position.

“You don’t go into a small market to get mired and stay there forever,” Franklin said, quoting advice from his mentor. “You go for a couple of years and see how far you grow.”

His work at these smaller stations served as a great learning experience, which provided him with the skills to take his career to the next level. While in Houston, he became the play-by-play voice of the Houston Oilers and the University of Texas Longhorns.

It was during his time with the Longhorns that opportunity truly presented itself to Franklin. He received a job offer from ESPN, but initially turned it down because of a commitment he made to DeLoss Dodds, former athletic director at Texas.

“They couldn’t believe that I would turn down a job offer like that,” Franklin said. “I just told them I made a promise that I would stay X number of years, and I was still a year short. I told them if you’re still interested, would you please call me back next year?”

One year later, ESPN called him back, and this time he accepted the offer.

“They put me on a job of something that they were trying to create, and that was Primetime Saturday Night Football,” he said.

“For me being on prime time on Saturday night was like dying and going to heaven. We did the top game every Saturday night that ran on ESPN.”

“

I think he has been a great representative of Ole Miss. He has a wonderful voice which enabled him to become the best sports announcer in America.

— FORMER CHANCELLOR, ROBERT KHAYAT Franklin stayed with the network for almost 24 years, from 1987 until his retirement in 2011.

“He’s a star in the broadcast world,” Alford said. “He’s as good as it gets.”

For the majority of his stay, he was one of the most prominent announcers in college sports.

“It just let me know that a kid from a small, rural town in Mississippi could be given an opportunity like this,” he said. “Every week I’d pinch myself and say ‘this is really happening.’”

“An individual just needs to be willing to work hard to learn what it takes,” Franklin said.

“It doesn’t matter how little experience you have,” he said. “There are ways to gain experience, and it’s just how much ‘want to’ you have.”

Franklin also suggests summer internships for students who want to gain experience.

“A lot of the same principles still hold true,” he said, “but it is far different today than when I came through – some stations just make you a gopher.

“We never did that in Houston [with] our interns. We brought them in and made them put together 12 packages for their resumes, and all our kids got jobs.”

Franklin credits much of his success to the mentors who gave him advice while at the university, including his close friendship with former chancellor Khayat.

Although Franklin has lived in several places, he said he wouldn’t change his Southern upbringing for anything.

“I’m not sure I would have prospered any more if I had gone to another school,” he said.

The author, a 2014 Meek School graduate, works for The Hechinger Report.

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profiles

ANNE GLOVER

“

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Learn the basics of journalism, learn how to write even if you’re a photographer. If you’re an editor, learn how to report. If you’re a public relations person, learn what the newspaper needs.

A

By Taylor Delandro

nne Glover, digital content editor at the Tampa Bay Times, truly loves what she does.

One might think she had black ink in her blood because she always wanted to be a writer, and she was exposed to the newspaper field at an early age.

Her parents were big newspaper readers, and their example instilled a love of reading in her. Glover’s aunt was a sports writer at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, and her uncle also wrote for the paper and owned a newspaper in Indianola, Mississippi.

“Just being exposed to it and just knowing my aunt was one of those people that made ‘the magic’ come out, that just really kind of sealed the deal,” Glover said. “I was hooked, you get paid to read and to write.”

Glover would later find out that her mother was a features editor for a newspaper in Columbus, Mississippi.

“I knew my mother worked at the local paper in Columbus, but she never told me she was a features editor,” Glover said. “I didn’t realize that she had once been the features editor until I went to the features department to work, she goes ‘Oh, I used to be the features editor there.’”

Glover had a connection to the University of Mississippi, growing up in Columbus. Glover’s mother’s family were Ole Miss fans and friends with former Ole Miss football player and coach, Billy Brewer.

But it was attending band camp on campus that made Glover decide to attend the university.

“I’m like ‘Oh, I’m going to Ole Miss.’ I loved the campus and everything about it,” she said. “I knew they had a good daily newspaper, and I knew I wanted to go into journalism.”, Glover became a staff member at The Daily Mississippian during her sophomore year and worked for the paper through her junior year, when she became managing editor.

“I had a great time, especially working for the paper. I felt we really got daily experience and professional experience,” she said. “We put that paper out everyday and had to think what’s the news, what do we have on our plate, and budget.”

Kathy Ferguson, communications strategist at FedEx Express, said, “Anne Glover worked as my news editor while I served as editor of The Daily Mississippian in the early 1980s. I considered her my right hand, giving her many responsibilities.

“She never let me down. She was highly motivated, dedicated, loyal and responsible. I consider her one of the best copy editors in the business.”

After graduating, Glover set off to Florida and started her career as a part-time copy editor at what was then the St. Petersburg Times.

Although she hasn’t had a big career in reporting, Glover has been making moves from an editor’s desk at the Tampa Bay Times.

She was an assistant managing editor of the copy desks for 12 years, but she has also been part of launching many new publications and projects for the Times. Two of her more successful ones were tbt*, a free tabloid aimed at young adults, and the paper’s Things to Do website.

Her LinkedIn site notes that she “specializes in creativity, teamwork, optimism and an overriding desire to bring exceptional leadership to whatever assignment” she is given.

When Glover writes, she prefers short bursts and being really precise and creative. She said she enjoys giving readers short, fun, interesting or unique stories that she can create as an editor.

Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay Times

“I’ve got a little bit of marketer in me, I like to sell stories, not just write them,” Glover said.

“One thing that sticks with me all the time,” she said. “Our [Daily Mississippian] publisher, Lee White, gave us an idea for a great story, but we left it out of the paper, and he taped it to the door the next morning and wrote on the bottom of it ‘good story.’

“So, when people get excited about a good story, you have to say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to get that online or in the paper. We’ve got to find a way to make it happen.’

“I think about that all the time when I’m trying to do something and I know it’s a good story and I know it’s going to get a lot of viewership. I’ll just make it happen. It has to happen.”

During her career, she’s made it a point to keep learning and stretching, and for nine years she was a visiting faculty member at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

“I have taught several copy editing seminars, as well as select classes over the years involving ethics in the media,” she said. “I also assisted in a groundbreaking Eyetrac study conducted by members of the faculty there.”

Her article for Poynter, “The Seven Deadly Copy Editing Sins,” tries to help copy editors in their efforts to be perfect.

Journalism students should “be flexible and do anything that they need to do to gather the news or present the news.”

It’s not print, it’s not broadcast, it’s not photojournalism, it’s everything, Glover said.

“Learn the basics of journalism, learn how to write even if you’re a photographer. If you’re an editor, learn how to report. If you’re a public relations person, learn what the newspaper needs.”

“You’ve got to do all of these things in today’s environment,” she said. “You don’t have the luxury of sort of being a specialist.”

The author is a Meek School journalism major.

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profiles

CONNIE GREEN FREIGHTMAN

“

60 MEEK SCHOOL

Connie is the definition of a team player. She had a great knowledge of the Metro area and was more than willing to share that expertise with other colleagues. She was very unselfish in helping other reporters and in helping new reporters and editors get to know the metro Atlanta area. — ANGELA TUCK

By Madisen Theobald

W

hen young Connie Green Freightman, valedictorian of her class, told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to be a newspaper reporter, the counselor told Freightman that newspaper journalism jobs did not pay well. She said Freightman could do better.

However, her guidance counselor’s words only encouraged her to be hardworking and successful in the field of journalism.

“The field of journalism was more competitive [due to the Watergate story] and generally offered low pay,” Freightman said. “I was undaunted. My guidance counselor’s advisory just made me realize that I had to focus not just on good grades in college, but I also had to find ways to position myself for a journalism career after graduation.”

Freightman (’82) is now a freelance journalist in Atlanta, Georgia. She has received countless opportunities from her education.

She was born in Lexington, Mississippi, and graduated from high school in 1978. After high school, she traveled a short distance to attend Ole Miss for the best journalism program in the state. Once she became an Ole Miss Rebel, she became involved in campus activities, applied for internships and took advantage

of networking opportunities with experts in the field.

Freightman decided to double major in journalism and English. She worked for The Daily Mississippian and landed a few summer internships.

While attending Ole Miss she found respect in the journalism department because it demanded quality and perseverance, emphasized the importance of students keeping up-to-date on the news and encouraged students to seek internships for job experience.

After her sophomore year at Ole Miss, her first internship was with the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. Then she was an intern with the Washington Post. About a month before Freightman’s graduation in May 1982, the Atlanta Constitution offered her a job as a reporter.

“There was not a better feeling than leaving college with a degree and a job in my field,” Freightman said.

“I was happy, but mostly grateful and relieved.

“The journalism program at Ole Miss prepared me to get off to a good start,” she said, and she still appreciates the support and high expectations the program had for its students.

About a month after graduation, she was writing for the Atlanta Constitution, the city of Atlanta’s morning newspaper. Later on that year, the newspaper merged with the Atlanta Journal, the city’s evening newspaper.

Freightman was ecstatic to be among the staff members kept on after the merger, writing wrote on topics

such as city government, education, courts and social services.

“Connie is the definition of a team player,” said Angela Tuck, her former boss.

“She had a great knowledge of the Metro area and was more than willing to share that expertise with other colleagues. She was very unselfish in helping other reporters and in helping new reporters and editors get to know the metro Atlanta area.”

After eight years as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Freightman took a job as a copy editor in the features department. This was a big change for her since she came from a hard news background, but she wanted to make room for potential opportunities.

Freightman’s first editing job was assistant features editor for travel.

While she appreciated the offer, she was uneasy at first.

“Do they really want me to edit the travel section?” she thought.

“I’m a farm girl from Mississippi, and I haven’t done much traveling.”

Later she was asked to take on the home & garden and style sections.

“Home & garden? I was more familiar with agriculture than horticulture,” Freightman said.

“And I was still a hard news journalist at heart. But what is life without challenges that take you out of your comfort zone? So I decided to push aside those insecurities and go for it!”

She oversaw two fashion writers for the style section and assigned reporters to do stories filed from Milan, Paris and New York City at the fall and spring fashion shows.

As home & garden editor, she supervised a staff that consisted of a columnist, a home writer and a garden writer. She also assigned

By Mary Lynn Kotz As a member of the Department of Journalism’s Advisory Board during the 1980s, part of my role was to mentor recent graduates and assist in job placement.

When I was informed that Connie Green had won a prestigious internship with the Washington Post, I invited her to stay in our District of Columbia apartment until she got her bearings.

(Sondra Raspberry was looking for a babysitter. Connie moved in with the Raspberry family, where she gained another mentor — Bill, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a Mississippi-born columnist for the Washington Post).

Having never been to the nation’s

stories to freelance writers and contract columnists.

In addition to regular sections, her team produced four special sections each year. They crafted a fall and spring home improvement guide and a fall and spring home design section that focused on home decorating trends for each season.

Freightman worked with freelancers and staff writers to produce the annual gift guide at the beginning of the holiday shopping season.

“The highlight was working to help writers improve their craft and to reach their personal career goals,” Freightman said.

“I was proud to see many of them move into editing jobs after I left my full-time editing job at the newspaper for a part-time position that allowed me to spend more time with my family.”

Freightman is married to John Freightman, also an Ole Miss alumnus, and they have three children.

After the birth of her third child in 2000, Freightman decided to work from home as a writer and a copy editor.

In 2003, she received an offer from a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague who was a senior manager in the corporate communications department at Delta Air Lines.

The offer was intriguing.

Since childhood, Freightman had been fascinated with the aviation industry and had considered becoming a pilot.

Freightman decided to take the job, and five years later she was offered a full-time job as a writer for Delta. She was given the opportunity to work with the company’s Intranet team to write and post news to the company’s division websites.

She is a freelancer, doing research for two book projects: one about growing up in Mississippi and another on Atlanta after the Civil Rights movement.

“Right now, I prefer the flexibility because I have time to work on my book projects,” Freightman said. “I may even head out to a local airport and take flying lessons.”

Connie Green Freightman is an Ole Miss success story, and today she might well tell her high school teacher that she could not have done better in any field.

The author is a junior, journalism major from Normal, Illinois.

capital, Connie was very grateful for her opportunity.

I was touched by her story; she grew up on a farm near Lexington. Connie was able to attend the new Head Start program nearby. She entered public school with a head start, and a very good head — which brought her to our front door in June 1980.

The next morning my husband, a Pulitzer Prize reporter and now a freelance author, drove her to the Washington Post building, where she was given a brief orientation and assignment.

They handed her keys to a company car, she told me, and sent her to cover the Arlington, Virginia courthouse.

This pre-Internet, pre-GPS, would have

been daunting even to me, a veteran journalist who had lived in the area for 20 years. Connie did not blink. She drove across the Potomac, scanned the court’s dockets, nosed out a story and came back with a byline in the next morning’s newspaper.

Her cool composure and intelligent initiative carried her far in her journalism career — eventually as Home & Garden editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Later, after marriage and becoming a mother, she took a night job in the news department as a copy editor, so she could be with her small children in the day time.

There, she made a surprising deci-

sion for an upwardly mobile journalist.

“The time pressure was taking its toll on my children — and on me,” she told me when I visited her in Atlanta.

“I needed to be at home and guide them to become the kind of mature, intelligent, caring adults I knew they were capable of being.”

Not a far cry from what we learned in our ethics of journalism courses at Ole Miss.

Mary Lynn Kotz (’56), a journalist and author of “Rauschenberg: Art and Life;” and co-author of “Upstairs at the White House: My Life With the First Ladies.” She is married to Nick Kotz. Their son, Jack Mitchell Kotz, is a photographer.

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profiles

Photo by H. Darr Beiser/ USA TODAY staff

DENNIS MOORE

By Clancy Smith

W

hat is “a deuce and a quarter?”

Dennis Moore’s first internship interview was turning into a complete disaster. Having driven to Memphis, Tennessee from Oxford, the extremely nervous Ole Miss senior sat facing the editor of The Commercial Appeal.

Dennis racked his brain. Nothing.

Next question: Flying in a straight line from Memphis to the South Pole, what countries do you pass over?

Dennis struggled to come up with an answer.

After a bout of similar questions, Dennis left the office. He did not receive the internship.

Later he would learn that “a deuce and a quarter” is a street name for a Buick Electra 225.

“I guess he wanted to see if I had street cred,” Moore said.

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Today, Dennis Moore works as a managing editor for USA Today in Washington, D.C. He serves as editor of the “Life” section, which covers all things entertainment.

“I never thought that I would be able to play in such an arena,” he said.

Moore grew up in Memphis before making the decision to attend Ole Miss at the suggestion of a close friend.

“From day one I felt like I was part of the Ole Miss family and never, ever regretted that decision,” Moore said.

A career in journalism was not an obvious choice for Moore. He tried majoring in pre-med, psychology and business before discovering his passion for journalism.

“I fell in love with writing and editing and the university faculty guided me on to what eventually became a really fulfilling career.”

While at Ole Miss, Moore served as an editor and reporter for The Daily Mississippian, an editor of the Ole Miss yearbook and president of Chi Psi Fraternity and was active in the leadership society Omicron Delta Kappa.

“

If you listen to Dennis you wouldn’t have any idea of what a strong journalist he is, how ethical he is, what a strong editor he is and just design-wise what he brings to the table as far as making the product attractive. — FRED ANKLAM

Will Norton, dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, who taught Moore during his time at Ole Miss, said that The Daily Mississippian staff of which Moore was assignments editor was probably as good as any college newspaper staff anywhere in the nation.

“They were great reporters and editors,” he said. “They were committed to covering the news, and they believed in freedom of expression and were tough minded. So they were less likely to be defined by other people’s opinions.

“They knew who they were, and they didn’t let what other people thought decide who they thought they were.”

Moore notes that some of his very best friends were made at Ole Miss. He still keeps in touch with them.

“That’s one of the marvelous things about Ole Miss,” he said. “The lifelong friendships you develop.”

After his time at Ole Miss, Moore jump started his career by accepting a position at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson.

Although the newspaper did not have any openings for writers, like he had hoped, he began work as a copy editor and forged his own path.

Moore essentially made his own assignments. He would write a story and turn it in to the editor without being asked.

His superiors liked the stories, saw promise and published them.

“I had to take the initiative — and certainly I encourage anyone who has an interest, which is not necessarily being fulfilled in the job that they’re in to find a work-around,” Moore said. “That’s what I did.”

From The Clarion-Ledger, Moore moved on to work in editor positions in Rochester, New York, and Orlando, Florida.

Then he received a phone call from an old editor friend at The Clarion-Ledger, asking if he would like a job at USA Today.

“Another good lesson,” Moore said. “Stay in good stead with all the people you’ve worked with in the past because you never know when they’re going to turn around and do you big favors.”

Challenges that Moore faced in his transition from a local newspaper to USA Today included his stark Southern accent and a necessary adjustment to an around-the-clock publication. While he has learned to temper the accent a bit, Moore says adjusting to the demands of such a large news source was a little more difficult.

“The pressure of working for a 24/7 publication is really challenging because you can never unplug,” he said. “You always have to be aware of news that’s happening and the speed of competition is so intense now.”

Fred Anklam, an Ole Miss alumnus who worked with

Moore in college at The Daily Mississippian, The Clarion-Ledger and now at USA Today, says that Moore is humble about his talent.

“If you listen to Dennis,” he said, “you wouldn’t have any idea of what a strong journalist he is, how ethical he is, what a strong editor he is and just design-wise what he brings to the table as far as making the product attractive.

“He really has the whole package.”

Anklam sees the effect Moore has on those he works with.

“He’s the kind of person that once you just work with him a little bit you just respect where he’s coming from and what he’s bringing from experience and his background as an editor,” Anklam said.

One of Moore’s favorite assignments was covering the Winter Olympics in 2010. He spent about three and a half weeks producing a video blog and publishing articles in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, about activities outside the athletic competitions.

Moore also was invited by Disney to visit the set of “The Help” while the movie was being filmed in Mississippi. He prides himself on being the first to do a cover story on Octavia Spencer, the actress who went on to receive an Academy Award for her role as Minny in the movie.

When he is not working, Moore enjoys long-distance running, bicycling and hiking. He also looks forward to coming down to see Ole Miss play football every now and then.

“I spend so much time in the office that I guess I like to spend as much time outdoors as I can when I’m not in the office,” Moore said.

Norton has hopes of seeing Moore around Oxford again soon.

“I’ve been wanting him to teach a class here and bring in some of his movie producer friends.”

Beyond that, Moore has helped the Meek School in a variety of ways.

“He’s been very generous financially, and he’s very interested in education,” Norton said. “He’s very interested in helping people who are coming from the same background he did, so I would think his legacy will be using his life experiences to help others achieve their goals.”

And what advice does Dennis Moore give to journalism students hoping to achieve similar success?

“Learn to tell a good story.”

The author is a senior, journalism major from Satillo, Mississippi.

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GRADUATE

profiles

CELIA PAN

By Alison Bartel

C

elia Pan began her journalism career at the University of Mississippi under the most unlikely circumstances.

In June 1992, during the summer of her junior year in college, Pan (Pan Xi, in Chinese) was in her first week as an intern with a small government travel agency in Beijing. An English major at the Foreign Language Institute, she had already won national contests in speaking and writing in China—both in English and Chinese—and a songwriting competition for Chinese music. Her American Literature teachers, both from East Coast colleges, had urged her to apply to U.S. universities, and subsequently she was offered scholarships from Brown, Bryn Mawr and Emerson. She discovered, however, that the Chinese government and our government would not allow entry without proof of total support while abroad. She would be required to spend five years of national service (which could have included the Chinese army) after graduation. Only then could she re-apply, and only to graduate school, behind thousands of other students.

Her first assignment with the travel agency was a group of 10 tourists from throughout the U.S., to study “Art, Healing, and Spirituality in China,” a trip that would take them to cities and remote villages in the countryside. A country guide remained with them throughout the trip, and the group had a city guide for each city. Among the 10 in their first trip to mainland China was Mary Lynn Booth Kotz, a journalist, author and Ole Miss alumna based in Washington, DC. Pan, in the first week, was their city guide.

“She spoke perfect English,” Kotz said, “and quickly parsed the regional accents in our van. She had memorized every historic site in the huge city, and kept us spellbound. She was young, innocent, enthusiastic, and eager to help us.”

Kotz described how three in the group decided to “adopt” Pan after learning of her looming national service, and how she wanted to be a writer. The three named her Celia, after explaining that Xi would be quite difficult for Americans. She was asked what kind of writing she’d like to pursue — and answered that she’d seen CNN — commercial television — for the first time in hotel lobbies.

“She thought the visuals were impressive, a good way to send the message,” Kotz said. “I told her about the broadcast journalism program at Ole Miss, and described a lovely campus and village in my home state. Our most famous novelist lived there, I went on. ‘Have you heard of William Faulkner?’ She clapped her hand excitedly. ‘William Faulkner! I love William Faulkner! The Town, The Mansion, A Rose For Emily!’ Her spontaneous joy spread all over our van.”

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With aid from her three friends in the group, Pan applied for a student visa. After standing in long lines for days at the U.S. embassy, being denied twice. Only after assistance from an Ole Miss alumnus, Sen. Thad Cochran in Washington, was she granted a visa. By this time, she had been offered several scholarships to study journalism at the university. Shortly before registration, Pan arrived in Memphis, Tennessee.

“She was 20 and looked 16,” Kotz said. “For the next few days, we were hosted in her first American city by a 1952 Ole Miss journalism grad, Harry ‘Chigger’ Danzinger. I drove her down to Oxford, past the countryside and beauty of Sardis Lake and Dam. Her surprise and enthusiasm were enchanting. This America had been unknown to her. After we arrived in Oxford shortly before registration, I called my husband Nick Kotz, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist in Washington, to announce: ‘We have a daughter’.”

“She (Kotz) was way beyond a mentor to me,” Pan said. “More like a mother to me during my years in the U.S. Beyond caring for my personal life and taking me into her family warmly, which made me blend into American life much more easily than most other foreign students, she has had a tremendous impact on me intellectually.”

At Ole Miss, Kotz introduced Pan to Ed Meek, director of public relations at the university and later a donor for whom the Meek School was named. When he described his first meeting with Pan, Meek recalled checking her into her dorm, noticing her trying to figure out what to do with a paper bag. After asking what it contained, he discovered that the bag was full of currency. That was how Chinese students transported cash when going to study abroad, he recalled, when the Chinese banks did not have easy service connection to the international financial world.

“She grew after that,” Meek said. “She was so smart, and learned English so quickly. There was no question that she would have a great career.”

Meek assisted Pan with university orientation, helping her design an appropriate course schedule for her first semester, which included introduction to journalism writing, public relations, and Southern Studies 101, a class to make Pan at ease with a new cultural environment. He also helped her understand Deep South accents.

“To keep her grades high for her scholarships, she took a course in calculus for an easy A early in her Ole Miss years,” Kotz said.

“Thereafter, she took many electives. Her favorite was a creative writing course in the English department. In art, she studied and created ceramics. In drama, she directed, designed and made costumes for, and starred in ‘Agnes of God.’ In each of those classes, the professors invited her to change majors — to their own subjects.”

In her main, intense mission, and under the mentorship of Kotz, Meek, and journalism professors such as Ralph Braseth, Pan flourished in the university’s journalism program. Braseth, who then taught the broadcast reporting class, recalls that even though he was a self-proclaimed “tough grader,” Pan still excelled in his courses. In her thesis film for his documentary reporting class, Pan examined Oxford through the eyes of a foreign student.

“It was the finest film I’d seen produced by a student at Ole Miss,” Braseth said.

In the process of filming, she became familiar with the people of Oxford and its Southern history. She remembered interviewing a quintessential Southern lady who led Pan through her big house, straight to the bedroom. On the bed’s headboard, was a bullet hole. The woman’s great-grandmother had been killed during the Civil War in that very bed. Like many places in the South, history was bleeding from every crevice, but redemption was the common theme. The woman did not emphasize the death that had taken place generations ago, Pan recalled, but rather that babies had been born in the bed.

To this very day, Pan continues to draw on her experiences interviewing the people of Oxford for the documentary. “Southerners are great storytellers,” Pan said. “Very vivid and personal. And they are also very genuine and less worried about being politically or ideologically correct. All this made it a great experience to document them, the human side, the dignity, the romance, the humor and the heaviness of history that came out of all the great stories and details I was able to uncover.”

After graduating from the University of Mississippi summa cum laude in June 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism, Pan moved on to Stanford University with a $30,000 fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in communication with an emphasis in documentary film and video. There, to help support herself during her second year, she worked for a Stanford students’ start-up, called Yahoo. Her master’s thesis, with further grants and a loaned camera, was filmed back in Beijing. Kotz and her husband flew to Stanford for her 1997 graduation, and to view the class’ films, shown to the public.

Pan next worked for a California documentarian as an editor, viewing and cataloguing 400,000 feet of footage for, as it turned out, a prize winning film. But after two years, in 1999, she decided to return to China to reunite with her high school sweetheart, Wang Yang, who since her departure had become a music sensation in mainland China — and had visited her twice at Stanford. With the stage name Lao Lang, which literally translates as “old wolf,” a nickname she had given him at 14, Yang founded a genre of Chinese folk-rock music for young people that was being called the “Simon & Garfunkel style of China.” It peaked in the 1990s and emphasized the romanticism of youth. Later, it evolved into the pop genre, with Lao Lang still at the top of his popularity 24 years later.

Pan’s relationship with Wang was just one tie to her homeland. Although Pan received her journalism education in the U.S., her original journalistic inspiration was also back on the Chinese mainland.

Pan’s father had been a foreign correspondent for China’s official news outlet, Xinhua News Agency. During his career, he came back with stories and novelties from nations around the world.

“In a still relatively closed society during the 1980s, I was fascinated by the utterly exotic items my dad brought back for me,” Pan said. “As a result, I thought being a reporter meant you would have exposure to a much bigger and more exciting world, and that in a way, set the tone later for me to pursue journalism,” she said.

When Pan returned home in 1999, it was to a very different

China — one that had been burgeoning during her seven-year absence, with economic growth, urbanization and technological development.

The closed society in which Pan grew up was filled with forests of skyscrapers and teenagers glued to their cellphones while gliding across cities in streamlined subways. She continued to pursue documentary filmmaking, working on programs for PBS and CCTV, but between the modernized China and her Silicon Valley experience, she was drawn to a new industry that was transforming Photo by Rui Wang the way people live in China: the Internet.

“The pull of the Internet was really exciting,” she said. “Also, the skills I acquired producing documentaries and liking writing really helped me become a good marketer later in my career. In the end, I think you’d better go with what you’re most passionate about.”

She became the first editor from mainland China at Yahoo, founding the Yahoo Chinese search engine hierarchy. Pan next orchestrated digital operations in China for Google and IDG before accepting her current position in May 2011 as general manager of digital operations at Condé Nast China, an international branch of the mass media empire that boasts publications like Vogue, The New Yorker, Allure, and GQ. Her job consists of managing the company’s transition stage from traditional print media into new media in China.

“The challenge is to tailor a product, such as a website or an app for a magazine’s print counterpart, to today’s fragmented on-the-go lifestyle,” Pan said. “You must, in essence, tell a two-minute story for the teenager on the subway fiddling with his cellphone. You soon see that the constant attention to the target readers and their differentiated experience, beyond the lifestyle and consumptions that this company’s publications portray on the surface, is what really matters.”

Pan has taken up the challenge with gusto, leading Condé Nast China publications to rank number one in digital media in the fashion and lifestyle websites category while reaching more than 38 million users on a monthly basis, and having multiple apps honored as “Best of the Year” by Apple in the newsstand categories. She attributes those successes to the decades of accumulating relevant experiences along her career path. “It’s a great area to be in,” Pan said, “because it’s merging what I’ve been interested in all along — communication, art, technology and a global point of view. It has enabled me to merge my passions nicely.”

The author is an international studies and Chinese double major and an intelligence and security studies minor. She is a senior from Harvest, Alabama. Photo credit: Rui Wang MEEK SCHOOL 65

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profiles

Photo courtesy of The Commercial Appeal

OTIS SANFORD Otis Sanford, former managing editor of The Commercial Appeal and current holder of the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism at the University of Memphis, was inducted in the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame.

Five others were included in the 2014 class: Joe Birch, longtime anchor at WMC-TV in Memphis; Bob Johnson, co-anchor of WTVC in Chattanooga; Alex Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer with the New York Times; Luther Masingill, WDEF Radio/TV; and Sam Venable, columnist with the Knoxville News Sentinel.

By Jennifer Thurman

S

ince his years at Ole Miss, Otis Sanford has had an exceptional media career.

He is a political commentator for WREG-TV Channel 3 in Memphis, Tennessee, a columnist for the Commercial Appeal and the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism at the University of Memphis.

Before these positions, he was managing editor of the Commercial Appeal. During those years, he was named a member of the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame and was elected president of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association. He

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was appointed to the APME board in 2004 and served in various positions before eventually becoming president in 2009.

“It was fabulous to lead a great news organization that represents the interest of newspapers throughout the nation,” Sanford said.

Sanford was born in Como, Mississippi, attended Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi, and received a journalism scholarship from the University of Mississippi in 1973.

He graduated from Ole Miss in 1975 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

It only took writing one news article in the seventh grade for Sanford to decide journalism was the career for him. He wrote for

“

Ole Miss has one of the best journalism programs around. It set the ground work for me, taught me what I needed to know and made me appreciate journalism even more.

his high school newspaper and took as many journalism classes as he could before attending the university.

“Ole Miss has one of the best journalism programs around,” he said. “It set the ground work for me, taught me what I needed to know and made me appreciate journalism even more.

“I was attending Ole Miss when there was an incredible interest in journalism, primarily because of the Watergate scandal, and so the preparations, the class discussions and lectures, and the hands-on experience at The Daily Mississippian were just invaluable to me.”

His first year at Ole Miss was at the height of the Watergate hearings, Sanford said. Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., a member of Watergate Committee, spoke on campus, and Sanford was assigned to cover the event for the campus paper.

Watergate was one of the biggest stories of his generation, and it was a very exciting time to be doing journalism.

After graduation, Sanford was hired at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson as an entertainment writer. He left after two years to write hard news for the Commercial Appeal as a general assignment reporter.

Angus McEachran, Sanford’s editor at The Commercial Appeal, called him “the smartest hire I have ever made.”

“He is really bright, very organized, has great writing ability, listens to people, and is fair-minded,” he said. “He is a true treasure and has a natural instinct for news.”

Sanford recalls one of his most read stories. On Aug. 16, 1977, McEachran rushed out of his office and told Sanford to go the hospital. Sanford dropped everything he was doing and spent the afternoon interviewing as many people in the emergency room as he could.

His article was a cover story on people’s reactions to Elvis’ death and appeared on the front page the next day. His story is still being sold as a souvenir edition.

He was assigned the federal court beat, covering federal trials, federal grand juries, the FBI, and all the federal government offices in the federal building, until he was promoted to assistant metro editor seven years later.

Sanford was an assistant metro editor for a year until 1987 when he was offered a job at the Pittsburgh Press. McEachran had moved to the Pittsburgh Press and offered Sanford a job as assistant city editor. Sanford stayed at the Pittsburgh Press until a labor strike shut down the paper.

In 1992 he became deputy city editor at the Detroit Free Press for two years. Then McEachran, who had become editor of the

— OTIS SANFORD Commercial Appeal, called again. He made an offer Sanford could not refuse — deputy managing editor of the Memphis newspaper.

“I stuck with him because I recognize talent,” McEachran said.

“As you get older you try to groom people to take your place, and he was always someone I thought could do the job.”

In 1997 he participated in creating a student newspaper, the Teen Appeal. Many high schools in Memphis did not have a newspaper, and he wanted to increase participation in high school newspaper journalism. The Teen Appeal is still going strong today, and some of the student journalists moved on to be reporters. In 2000, he launched the DeSoto Appeal.

He was named managing editor in 2002 and created the citizen editorial board in 2007.

He left the newspaper in 2010 to join the faculty of the department of journalism at the University of Memphis.

He said after 35 years of being involved in the newspaper and newsroom it was time to do something different, and he wanted to teach the new generation of journalists what journalism is all about.

“I love teaching and being around students,” he said. “I try to help them understand this is a great profession and journalism is one of the noblest things anyone can do. You can affect society and public policy and be a voice for people who have no voice.”

He also is a political commentator for WREG-TV Channel 3 in Memphis and continues to write a column that appears in the Commercial Appeal on Sundays.

“Otis cares a lot about Memphis and wants to make a difference,” said Alex Coleman, WREG-TV anchor and news reporter.

“He’ll put you to the test and get the answers the community deserves. He takes pride in being a Southerner. He is committed and attached to Memphis. He can share his opinions, because he wants the best for Memphis.”

Coleman said Sanford has a huge influence on the station by analyzing big stories and determining what issues there are, what should and shouldn’t be done, and how politicians should handle things.

Sanford’s commentary airs Monday through Friday at 4:30 p.m.

“Otis’ commentaries and columns let you know what is right and wrong,” Coleman said. “He affects the Memphis area greatly. He is authoritative, well-researched, and takes his work very seriously.

Politicians even know that if they have done something wrong or something people don’t like, Otis will come knocking at their door.”

The author is a senior, exercise science major from Birmingham, Alabama.

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profiles

STEPHANIE SAUL

By Taylor Bennett

“T

he first thing you need now is really a passion for the business,” said Stephanie Saul, a seasoned New York Times reporter while speaking to a class of freshman journalism students on a cold October morning at the

University of Mississippi.

“If you find that your assignment’s a chore,” Saul said, “and you’re not that interested in writing stories, and you’re not that interested in going out with a camera … If you don’t find it that interesting, maybe this isn’t right for you, because I have to tell you, this isn’t a particularly easy job. It’s very competitive, and you can find there are other things you can do that are easier.”

Through the years, she has covered everything from town meetings, state legislatures and Capitol Hill to the police beat, the FBI, local and federal courts and a smattering of other topics. At the Times she covered the pharmaceutical industry before becoming a member of a 10-person investigations team.

She has done her share of what one could call national reporting, having held the title of national reporter at Newsday from 1994 to 2000. A lot of this involved what she calls “parachuting” -- on-thefly coverage of breaking national stories. She has won her share of awards, but the most highly regarded is the Pulitzer Prize.

Stephanie Saul came to Ole Miss in 1972 from New Albany, Mississippi. She had hopes of breaking into the medical field after graduation. Journalism was extracurricular, a hobby. She never thought it could eventually lead to a Pulitzer Prize.

Saul has been a reporter all her life. She started by writing the “Snoop” column for her middle school newspaper. Her high school class of 1972 was the first fully desegregated class in New Albany.

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She was editor of the school newspaper.

“I was always really interested in journalism,” Saul said. “When I was in high school I wrote for my school newspaper, but I didn’t really think of it as a career option. I just thought there would be more career opportunities in medicine than in journalism.”

She enrolled in journalism classes in addition to her pre-med classes and became more interested in working at The Daily Mississippian, the campus newspaper.

While at Ole Miss, many journalism professors influenced Saul and among those was Jere Hoar, who taught courses in law and ethics, public opinion and feature writing.

“Stars fell on Mississippi in Stephanie Saul’s years here,” Hoar said. “She was one of many student journalists who would go on to become outstanding professionals on major or regional publications, on wire services, in politics, public relations, writing, journalism education, publication ownership, law and other fields.”

“I taught Stephanie in advanced reporting during the fall of 1974, the first semester I was on the Ole Miss campus,” said Will Norton, then an assistant professor and now dean of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. “She demonstrated intrepid reporting that would characterize her career in the elite press.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Ole Miss in 1975, Saul went on to work as a staff reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Long Island newspaper Newsday. She is an investigative reporter for The New York Times and has worked there since 2005.

While working at Newsday, Saul won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting with Brian Donovan. Together they wrote a series of reports on abuse of disability pensions by Long Island police.

“When we first started that story,” Saul said, “we didn’t really expect it to be that big of a story.

“By the time the story was published, I thought it was a really strong entry in the Pulitzers, but a lot of times it’s really what else is being entered in your category that year.”

Saul recently was inducted into the University of Mississippi Alumni Hall of Fame.

In a letter of support of her nomination for the honor, Gregory E. Brock, senior editor for standards at The New York Times, wrote: “I could speak at length about Stephanie’s professional credentials. But I think her journalistic accomplishments — particularly the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting — speak for themselves.

“The reason I strongly endorse her selection is because of what she contributes to Ole Miss now, not merely for what she has done in the past — which is, of course, usually how Hall of Fame inductees are judged.

“She is without a doubt one of the best present-day ambassadors for Ole Miss. Just one appearance by Stephanie — say, at a Columbia University journalism class or at a national journalism conference — brings more credit and credibility to Ole Miss than the most sophisticated and expensive PR campaign you could ever create.”

She has taught at Hofstra University, helped teach a course at Columbia and also served as an adjunct professor in the national reporting class at Columbia. The university replaced her with an out-of-work former journalist named Al Gore.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hoar said, “if, before she retires, one of her series for the Times is not nominated for, or recognized by the awarding of a second Pulitzer Prize.”

“There are a lot of careers that choose people,” Saul said. “I think of it as kind of a niche profession, and it’s only good for some people.”

The author is a junior, journalsim major from Picayune, Mississippi.

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profiles

Richard Starmann

By Scott Fiene

H

e grew up in the Midwest, and knew nothing about the South — he had never been to Dixie and had no connections in the region. In fact, Mississippi seemed like a foreign land.

But after graduating from high school in the mid-1960s, he flew to Memphis, took a Trailways bus to Oxford and stepped onto the Ole Miss campus for the first time.

He carried his bags up the hill to Powers Hall and moved in.

Welcome, Dick Starmann, class of 1968.

“It sounds crazy now,” said Starmann, who later served in the Army then joined the McDonald’s Corp., eventually becoming senior vice president of worldwide communications.

“Who in their right mind, in that era, who was raised in Chicago, would suddenly come down to Mississippi for college?”

But come here he did. “It was one of the best things I ever did in my life.”

His classmates called him Yank.

And he called Ole Miss home.

Three Loves Starmann decided to attend Ole Miss because of the opportunity to double major in business and journalism — a dual degree not offered at many schools in the U.S. at the time. While there, he served in the ROTC program and was inducted into the Ole Miss Army ROTC Hall of Fame in 2010. He also was managing editor of The Daily Mississippian student newspaper.

“I had three loves at Ole Miss,” he said.

“First and foremost, I met my wife Kathy Smith from Vicksburg.

She worked at the newspaper, and that’s how we got to know each other. My second love was working on the school newspaper. Third was the Army ROTC … my fraternity.”

At that time, the editor of the newspaper was selected in a cam-

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pus-wide election. Starmann ran and was soundly trounced by the other candidate, Charles Overby, who later would be a successful corporate executive with The Gannett Co., Inc., and with the Freedom Forum.

“That election was a good lesson for me,” Starmann said. “I learned don’t run against somebody who is already so well established. While I was standing outside trying to get in a sorority house to speak, he [Overby] was already inside giving his speech.”

After his win, Overby offered Starmann the job as managing editor.

“He won the election, then I ended up doing a lot of the work,” Starmann said. “In addition to being a terrific person, Charles is a very smart guy.”

Thus, a lifelong friendship began between the two, and their paths would cross many times throughout their respective careers.

“When Starmann was at Ole Miss,” Overby said, “the majority of students were from Mississippi. In that era, he was an outsider, and his ability to succeed says a lot about his persistence and talent. He had to do more and be more than the other students.”

A “Lucky Guy” — Twice

After graduation, Starmann was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and then headed to Ft. Benning, Georgia, for infantry and paratrooper training. From there, it was on to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, where he trained for and was awarded the Green Beret. Then in 1969, he went to Vietnam, where he served in Army Special Forces as assistant operations officer in a classified reconnaissance outfit known as Project Delta.

“I was lucky as hell because I came home alive; more than 50,000 other men didn’t,” he said.

And then he became a hamburger guy.

“I interviewed with this old man named Ray Kroc who had started a little hamburger chain,” Starmann said. “He offered me a job as a regional marketing manager covering the entire Southeastern and Southwestern United States. I had a big territory but not many

stores, because at the time there weren’t very many McDonald’s. If I recall, there were maybe two in the whole state of Mississippi and maybe three or four in Alabama.

“I was a very lucky guy, because I got to work for the founder and chairman of a company that was ultimately going to become a pretty big organization. But my mother was devastated. She said ‘You went to college and double majored at Ole Miss and were an officer in the Army and now you’re going to work for a hamburger stand?’”

After quite a number of promotions — which made his mother feel better, no doubt — he was named senior vice president of worldwide communications where he oversaw media relations, public relations, internal communications, sports marketing, customer relations, financial media and international communications (and traveled to more than 100 nations on behalf of McDonald’s).

Along the way, he became a close personal friend of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc’s wife, Joan. After Ray’s death, he was a senior advisor to Joan, helping with, among other things, her ownership of the San Diego Padres baseball team (of which he was on the board of directors). When Joan died, he became co-trustee of her estate.

He also was a founding member of the board of trustees of Ronald McDonald House.

Starmann retired from McDonald’s in 1998, but continues consulting around the world. His area of expertise? Something he’s got a lot of firsthand experience with: crisis management.

Protecting the Golden Arches During his last 17 years at McDonald’s, Starmann was responsible for all internal and external communications functions, both in the U.S. and internationally. But he also oversaw a crisis task force, which was a small group of executives in corporate headquarters who were responsible for handling situations that directly threatened the brand.

“My job was to preserve and protect the Golden Arches — to keep the shine and sparkle on them,” he said. “I took this job very seriously, and we had some serious threats.”

Perhaps the biggest came in July 1984, when a man walked into a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, and shot 43 people.

Twenty-two died. At the time, it was the largest single massacre by an individual in American history. And of course, it instantly became worldwide news.

“In 1984,” he said, “even without electronic media like we have today, it was on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

One of the early AP wire photos that ran in color was a scene of the carnage from the restaurant. It was a terrible tragedy.”

Over the next few days, he and his team were interviewed by more than 1,400 media outlets, but soon a decision had to be made: What to do with the restaurant once the police investigation was concluded?

“After the police finished,” he said, “we had to ask ourselves do we clean it up, get new seating, new equipment and reopen, or do we tear it down? I finally was able to convince the president of McDonald’s USA that the best course of action was to tear it down. Get rid of it. It was the site of a horrible, horrible tragedy and that was never going to change.”

Once the decision was made to tear it down, Starmann made it happen immediately. Construction crews came in the middle of the night and began the demolition, starting with the road sign.

“We didn’t want camera crews filming the Golden Arches coming down,” he explained, noting they didn’t want media to start using phrases like falling arches, broken arches or bloody arches.

Within three hours, the restaurant was gone.

Communication Skills Although he graduated more than 45 years ago, Starmann still values the education he received at Ole Miss, especially the communication skills he learned in the journalism program.

“The professors were tough on us,” he said. “We’d write something, and rewrite it, and rewrite it again, and work on sentence structure. … I still do a lot of writing today. Words are very powerful things.”

And though not required, he took every speech course possible and was passionate about honing his interviewing, writing and speaking skills.

“So often in my career,” he said, “I’ve seen people who graduate from fabulous programs, and they’re bright students, but they’re terrible in interviews. They don’t know how to sell themselves. They don’t know how to talk to people.

“They’ve got all this knowledge and have taken all this time to learn many things, but they can’t articulate to someone why they should be hired. This can really hurt the start of a career.”

Starmann returns to campus regularly to speak to students, and serves on the board of visitors for the Meek School of Journalism and New Media.

And he still eats at McDonald’s regularly — at least twice a week, he says — and stays close to the company he loves.

“I’m a customer, a stockholder and an old hamburger guy.

“I’ve still got ketchup in my veins.

“And I’m still an Ole Miss Rebel!”

The author is the program director and an assistant professor of Integrated Marketing Communications. He spent 25 years in the corporate marketing communications and public relations profession before joining Ole Miss in January 2012.

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“

RYAN RIGNEY The Meek School has, for me, been more than just a place for learning. It has offered an environment filled with gregarious people who are determined to work together to stay on—or ahead of—the cutting edge of the journalism field. In an industry as turbulent as this one, that matters.

Growing up in Poplarville, Mississippi, newspapers were not a significant part of daily life. I thought the local paper was just something you got your name in if you made honor roll or shot a really huge deer. I had no interest in newspapers, but in high school, I signed up for a class called Journalism 101 with Mr. Stephen Seal. Other students said that Seal gave you freedom to do whatever type of projects you wanted, and that sounded appealing.

Seal allowed me to develop a blog—it was harder to make one back then — and run news for the school website. I fell in love with writing, and Seal fed my interests, introducing me to magazines that publish great storytelling and encouraging me to develop my abilities. Soon, I figured it out: Journalism was what I wanted to do with my life.

A few years later, I took my first class in the Meek School. Now, I’ve just finished my senior year.

Much has changed in these last few years. The Meek School has evolved, becoming a great place to learn how to produce multimedia. I’ve become a demonstrably better writer. I finally put on the “freshman fifteen,” although it took me four years to do it, and I’m still skinny as a stick.

Perhaps as many things have stayed the same. There are still no conveniently located bathrooms in Farley Hall. I still bite my fingernails to smithereens every time I write an article. Curtis Wilkie, who contributed a great deal to my development as a writer, still has the same epic beard and inimitable, rumbling voice.

More worryingly, whenever anyone brings up “the future of print,” everyone still throws their hands up in the air and says, “I don’t know, somebody ought to figure that out.” Sometimes Meek School professors will follow up this admission by gesturing wildly at nearby students and declaring, “This one is up to you guys to solve! You teach me! You teach me.”

I don’t have the solution to print’s troubles either, but I spent the last four years just trying to get published as much as possible. I sold stories to as many magazines as I could, wrote a book about people who’ve made famous iPhone games, and was hired as a regular contributor to WIRED. (They make us format it that way, I swear.) My logic was: If I write more, I’ll 72 MEEK SCHOOL

get better at writing, and then I’ll be better equipped to adapt to whatever the changing times call for.

I briefly flirted with a backup plan, in case this whole getting paid to put words together thing doesn’t pan out in the future — I pulled together some friends and started a company to develop video games. We made two of them, one for Xbox and one for iPhone.

It was a learning experience, which is what people say after they spend a lot of time and money working on a thing that doesn’t sell very well. (This is ironic, because my company won first place in the 2012 Ole Miss Gillespie Business Plan Competition. Thankfully, it wasn’t a business execution competition.)

Throughout my time at Ole Miss, I’ve spent two hours working on my own projects for every one hour spent attending classes or doing homework. During all this, I’ve had an unbelievable amount of support and instruction coming from the Meek School staff.

Talented teachers, like Vanessa Gregory and Mark Dolan, took special time out for me to help me grow in areas where I was lacking. Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni allowed me to take part in more than one of his many projects, including the crazy and unique ACT Experience conference. I could always count on Charlie Mitchell to be good for a half-hour, unscheduled and off-topic discussion about ... well, just about anything. I’d come into his office looking for advice about some issue or another, and leave with both the advice I needed and a grab bag of stories and opinions about topics too varied to count.

The Meek School has, for me, been more than just a place for learning. It has offered an environment filled with gregarious people who are determined to work together to stay on — or ahead of — the cutting edge of the journalism field. In an industry as turbulent as this one, that matters.

Yes, some parts about the future of journalism seem sort of scary. The economics of online publishing don’t seem to be getting much better — the word “BuzzFeed” gives me a headache — and a few magazines I’ve contributed to have shut down for good. I even had the undeserved honor of writing the last ever five-star review for GamePro, which at the time of its closing was the longest running video game magazine in America (The review, by the way, was for Minecraft.)

The Meek School will have to continue to adapt, as it has done in the past. As news is further decentralized, and it becomes even less common for journalists to get one job at a paper and stick with it for years on end, skills in the art of freelance writing and unsolicited story pitching will become more valuable. I learned these skills because my circumstances demanded that I learn them on my own, but many students would benefit from being exposed to them via instruction in a classroom setting. That’s something that the Meek School could, but does not, currently offer.

I’ve balanced this essay with the usual amount of measured caution about the future of journalism, but don’t take that to mean that I’m worried — I’m not.

When the rules in a game change rapidly, that’s just an opportunity for the most innovative and hardest working players to leap ahead and build something new and great. If I manage to become one of the lucky ones who can do that, I’ll have my experience with the Meek School to thank.

Ryan Rigney is a 2014 Meek School graduate.

JOHNNY NEUMANN

By Austin Miller Johnny Neumann is back.

After nearly 40 years of playing and coaching basketball professionally in the United States and overseas, a former All-American from Memphis, Tennessee, has returned to the University of Mississippi to complete an undergraduate degree.

Neumann is working toward a degree in general science, with minors in journalism and parks and recreation, while working part-time for Michael Joe Cannon and Cannon Motors in Oxford.

“I feel that when I left after my father suffered his heart attack,” Neumann said, “there was a lot of unfinished business that I wanted to continue to do.

I feel that it is very important that student-athletes understand how important a degree is.”

Cannon told Neumann, “You’re setting an example, even though you don’t know it, for these younger guys because word will get around.

“He’s progressing,” Cannon said. “I told him that it’s going to take some time, but you can’t give up and you have a lot of fight in you. That’s part of playing college athletics and what it does for you.”

After Neumann moved back to Oxford, and Kyle Veazey’s centerpiece feature on Neumann appeared in The Commercial Appeal in October 2011, Steve Farese, a former teammate, got in touch with Neumann, and he lived with Farese for two years, on and off.

As a result of Veazey’s article, Dr. Robert Wyatt, a kidney specialist at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, contacted Neumann. Dr. Wyatt helped to cure former NBA star Alonzo Mourning, who had a kidney problem, and Neumann hopes he will be as successful treating Esmeralda, his 6-year-old daughter who suffers from nephrotic syndrome.

When Neumann moved back to Oxford, he brought his family here temporarily, and then his wife, Liliana, and daughter went back to Moldova, where his daughter could continue to learn her native Romanian language and be with her grandmother.

Then, Peter Vecsey, a sports columnist for The New York Times, and legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson paid for Neumann’s family’s tickets to bring them back permanently.

“Getting them here has been a help,” Neumann said, “and has made me more solidified into the community, but not that many people actually know that I am going back to school here. I want them to be aware of that and, when I’m more established, I want to put on some basketball clinics and coaches clinics to help younger coaches.”

Eddie Crawford, special assistant to the athletics director, helped recruit Neumann to Ole Miss when he was enjoying a great career at Overton High School in Memphis.

“Johnny was a great basketball player, one of the

best we have ever had here,” said Crawford, Ole Miss head basketball coach from 1963-68.

Neumann’s older brother, Bob, had attended the University of Memphis (then known as Memphis State University). So Neumann was interested in the Tigers, but they played a slow-down game under coach Moe Iba, and Neumann wanted to play in an up-tempo game under Ole Miss coach Cob Jarvis.

“I wanted some place close to home where my parents could see me, and I loved the atmosphere at Ole Miss,” Neumann said.

“The Rebels impressed me so much because they recruited four-to-five high school All-Americans other than myself, and we had the possibility to do something really big-time.

“At that time, you couldn’t play as a freshman. You played your sophomore year. We were voted the No. 2 freshman team in the nation. We only lost one game.

“I felt that this was where I should be. The coaches were very good. It was a different atmosphere than anything I was exposed to. I liked the small-town community and the major football program.”

Neumann left his mark in the record books. His 40.1 points-per-game scoring average during the 1970-71 season led the nation and ranks fifth all-time.

Pete Maravich holds each of the top three spots.

“Johnny Neumann was Mississippi’s version of Pete Maravich,” said Rick Cleveland, former prize-winning sports editor of The Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson. “And then he was gone, just like that.

“No telling what he could have achieved had he played his junior and senior seasons in Oxford.”

Neumann also occupies the top four spots on the Ole Miss single-game scoring chart, with his 63-point performance against LSU topping the list. That performance against the Tigers also ranks seventh all-time in NCAA Division I. “I was able to accomplish that because I had other great players with me who got me the ball,” Neumann said of the 1970-71 season. “The majority of the systems were run for me.

“We were a completely different team from LSU, where Pete dominated everything.

“I could also pass extremely well like Pete and do things similar to Pete, where here I was used as a scoring weapon and played small forward.”

However, after his sophomore season, his college career at Ole Miss was cut short by extenuating circumstances, and he signed a professional contract with the Memphis Pros of the American Basketball Association.

He played for several teams in the ABA and later in the NBA before playing and coaching overseas, which included working under legendary coach Red Auerbach of the Boston Celtics and most recently as coach of the Romanian national team.

“My father suffered a severe heart attack, and somebody had to take care of the family,” Neumann said of turning pro after his sophomore season.

“Memphis offered me a good contract, and it was something that I had to do. But if my father had stayed healthy, I would have stayed the full four years at Ole Miss.”

While Neumann starred on the basketball court for the Rebels, Archie Manning led the football team to an 8-3 record and a Sugar Bowl win over Arkansas in 1969, and a 7-4 record with a Gator Bowl appearance in 1970.

With back-to-back wins in bowl games in football and the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance since 2002 and second SEC tournament championship in basketball, the Ole Miss program is enjoying a similar renaissance under athletics director Ross Bjork.

The number one thing, Neumann said, is the pride is back, that even if they lose a game, the players continue to play hard and not give up.

“We’re really coming back with Coach (Hugh) Freeze, and Andy (Kennedy) is doing a remarkable job with the basketball program. It’s like it was when I was here back with Archie,” Neumann said.

Neumann was recognized at the Ole Miss-LSU basketball game in 2012, and down the road he wants to give back to the university and the athletics program for what they have given him.

“I would like to be a color commentator for them and be able to be used in any way possible, whether it’s raising funds or recruiting student-athletes,” Neumann said.

“I would like to do that and use some of the expertise I have gained from coaching against the likes of Phil Jackson and George Karl, and all these other people I have played against and coached against.”

The author is a writer and blogger for OleMissSports. com. He joined the staff in June 2013 after serving as sports editor of The Daily Mississippian.

MEEK SCHOOL 73

STUDENT Photography

PHOTOS BY ALEX EDWARDS 2014 Meek School Graduate

A small fishing boat travels on the Missouri River in the shadow of downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

Sven Nys of Belgium wins the 2013 Cyclocross World Championships, held in Louisville, Kentucky. Nys won his second career world title over countryman Klaas Vantornout in freezing conditions and snow.

74 MEEK SCHOOL

PHOTOS BY KATIE WILLIAMSON 2013 Meek School Graduate

Phi Mu women fill the door frame of their sorority house as they sing to new sorority recruits at the University of Mississippi. During rush potential new members are escorted from house to house, learning about each campus sorority. Shot on Oct. 1, 2013.

Bryant Hadley operates the Full Tilt ride. It was one of many Lowery Carnival Company rides that visited Tupelo, Mississippi, from May 31 to June 3 in the Tupelo Furniture Market parking lot. Shot on June 2, 2013.

MEEK SCHOOL 75

FACULTY highlights

Jeanni Atkins

“ 76 MEEK SCHOOL

The biggest difference in journalism classes today and when I was at Missouri is the impact of the digital age.

By Samantha Rippon Jeanni Atkins, Meek School of Journalism and New Media associate professor and executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, has taught at the University of Mississippi since 1986. She served as director of the graduate program for 18 years and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in media law, history, theory, public opinion, ethics, research methods and advertising.

“My interest and passion for journalism stems from my years at the Missouri School of Journalism as an M.A. and Ph.D. candidate,” Atkins said.

“The best journalists consider their profession a calling and more than just a job,” she said. “In countries around the world they literally risk their lives to report on matters governments want to keep secret and even in this country during times of turmoil such as the civil rights movement.”

Working at the Missouri Freedom of Information Center furthered her belief that journalism is not only essential to inform the public, but also to hold government accountable.

“The study of media law and teaching it here at the University of Mississippi increased my understanding of the vital importance of the First Amendment as the foundation of all other rights we enjoy in a free society,” she said.

James Prince, publisher and editor of the Neshoba Democrat and the Madison County Journal and a former student, recalls his time in Dr. Atkins’ ethics class. “She encouraged us to think for ourselves,” he said. “Dr. Atkins’ strength is the personal interest she takes in students and, for me in particular, her concern for my success.”

Prince also had Atkins as his graduate advisor.

“She was rigorous, yet understanding. She steered me toward excellence,” he said.

“The biggest difference in journalism classes today,” Atkins said, “and when I was at Missouri is the impact of the digital age.”

This change, she believes, is a positive one. Optimistic that change will not diminish the role of the press to provide and deliver information about the world we live in, she is focused on keeping up with the changes the digital age and other factors have brought to media and the law.

As executive director of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, Atkins handles administrative matters, conducts research on access issues and edits and writes articles for the FOI Spotlight newsletter. She also participates in the secrecy series published in newspapers around the state each year and answers questions about access issues raised by reporters, editors and citizens.

Leonard Van Slyke, FOI hotline attorney, has been involved from the beginning of the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information in 1999.

“The Mississippi Press Association caused MCFOI to be formed,” Van Slyke said. “Not only that, but they have also supported the center and helped push legislation to improve access to government information.”

“Over the years,” Atkins said, “MCFOI and MPA have worked together on legislation to strengthen the Open Meetings Act and Public Records Act. The MPA made it possible to establish the MCFOI, and their support has kept us going now for 15 years.”

Today, the Center’s goal is to continue to educate people about the public’s right to know and work to improve transparency in government and make meetings and public records laws more effective for the citizens of Mississippi.

“With little fanfare there have been major advances in access legislation year by year while Dr. Atkins has headed MCFOI,” said Charlie Mitchell, assistant dean of the Meek School. “The greatest has been creation of an administrative process through the Mississippi Ethics Commission.

“Using a one-page, online form, people may now receive rulings on meeting and records questions and avoid the time and expense of filing lawsuits. There are also now individual fines for egregious violators, too.”

MCFOI is part of a nationwide freedom of information movement that today has expanded on

a global scale Dr. Atkins has been researching and writing about. “Transparency in government has been an ongoing struggle against government secrecy for decades,” Atkins said. “Little has been written about how this movement to combat secrecy began, so this book fills in that gap.”

She was awarded a sabbatical to draft a manuscript on why the public’s right to know about government should have constitutional protection and how it fits into the founders’ rationale for First Amendment protection of free speech and a free press and the philosophical framework of the theories of the First Amendment. The book provides a historical perspective on the evolution of the freedom of information movement and development and interpretation of access laws.

“I hope the book can contribute to an understanding of the important role of the press in making government more open and accountable,” Atkins said.

“And how the law has been used to combat secrecy and further the public’s right to know.”

Atkins has a contract for the book with Peter Lang International Academic Publishers.

“I don’t think much about what comes next,” she said, “but am focused on getting the book completed, being involved in MCFOI and helping students as best I can.”

The author is a senior, print journalism major from Oxford, Mississippi.

Photo by Alysia Steele

Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information The ad hoc steering committee on creating a First Amendment Coalition held its initial meetings in the spring of 1998. The committee was appointed by Dan Phillips president of the Mississippi Press Association and assistant publisher of The Oxford Eagle. Serving on the committee with Jeanni Atkins were:

Roland Weeks, The Sun Herald

Roger Moore, MADD

Dr. Edward Welch, Jackson State University

Barbara Powell, Common Cause

Carolyn Wilson, Mississippi Press Association

David Vincent, WLOX

Marty Wiseman, Stennis Institute at MSU Founding MCFOI Board of Directors: President: Dan Way, Delta Democrat Times

Duane McCallister, chairman, The Clarion-Ledger Dr. Stuart Bullion, University of Mississippi

Vice-President: Dennis Smith, WLBT

Wyatt Emmerich, Northside Sun

Treasurer: Dan Phillips, The Oxford Eagle

Lynn Evans, Mississippi Press Association

Roberta Avila, League of Women Voters

John Henegan, Butler Snow O’Mara Stevens & Cannada

Alice Jackson Baughn, Society of Professional Journalists

Dr. Marian Huttenstine, Mississippi State University

Randy Bell, WMSI

Dr. Art Kaul, University of Southern Mississippi

Eric Clark, Secretary of State

Charlie Mitchell, Vicksburg Post

Wyatt Emmerich, Northside Sun

Phillip Pierce, Stennis Institute at MSU

Frank Fisher, Associated Press

Dr. Larry Strough, Mississippi University for Women

David Hampton, The Clarion-Ledger

Dan Way, Delta Democrat Times

John Johnson, WTOK

Secretary: Patsy Brumfield, Senate Information Office

Atkins served as director of the FOI Clearinghouse and editor of the quarterly FOI Spotlight and was a non-voting advisory board member, as were representatives of Mississippi Press Association, Jackson State, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Association of Broadcasters, University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Institute, Butler Snow & Cannada, Heidelberg & Woodliff, Laird & Goff.

The National Freedom of Information Coalition awarded seed money in the amount of $9,000 to MCFOI in January 1999, and the Mississippi Press Association provided a $10,000 grant.

Articles of incorporation for MCFOI were filed with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office Aug. 31, 1998.

MEEK SCHOOL 77

FACULTY highlights

Joe Atkins

“ 78 MEEK SCHOOL

He adds a diversity of perspective to our faculty. A lot of what he writes, people in Mississippi do not really agree with. What that does is give Mississippians another point of view from which they can make decisions about public policy and other issues. And he comes to the classroom with years of experience. — Dean Will Norton, Jr.

J

By Hayley Ramagos oe Atkins radiates pure passion for the art of journalism.

A 35-year veteran journalist whose articles have appeared in publications such as USA Today, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Progressive Populist, Southern Exposure, Quill and Oxford American, Atkins exemplifies the kind of faculty member who brings academic and professional credentials to the classroom.

“He adds a diversity of perspective to our faculty,” says Dean Will Norton Jr. “A lot of what he writes, people in Mississippi do not really agree with. What that does is give Mississippians another point of view from which they can make decisions about public policy and other issues. And he comes to the classroom with years of experience.”

When Atkins became an assistant professor at the Ole Miss 24 years ago, he decided that continuing his active role as a journalist was a necessity.

Since then, Atkins has been a political columnist for The Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson, Mississippi, a free-lance writer for many publications, an avid blogger, and an author and editor. He is co-director of Meek School’s graduate program and has helped create a master’s track with more hands-on courses than the original master’s program.

After earning a master’s degree in journalism from American University in Washington, the North Carolina native moved with his wife to her home state of Mississippi. He became a city hall reporter, and later a state government reporter, for the Jackson Daily News.

Four years later, Atkins was asked to return to Washington as a congressional correspondent with Gannett News Service, writing for Southern newspapers owned

by Gannett.

“I sort of carved out a beat for myself at Gannett News Service,” Atkins said.

“They didn’t really have a reporter for the South, so I became their lead reporter covering southern issues.”

When Atkins’ wife was diagnosed with cancer, they decided to move back to Mississippi to be closer to home. Atkins considered returning to Jackson. However, after hearing of an opening at Ole Miss and being encouraged to apply by Norton, he was hired.

“I had always hoped, at some point, to teach,” Atkins said. “I didn’t know it was going to be that soon. I really thought I was going to be in journalism for a while, but I was happy with the move. I loved it.”

“Joe and I became fast friends when I moved to Oxford in 2001,” said Ace Atkins, a New York Times best-selling author and former crime reporter for The Tampa Tribune. “We both shared a love of blues, jazz and film noir. We also had a real passion for investigative journalism and seeing reporters not simply conduct interviews but to be skeptical and investigate.

“Joe’s commitment to teaching journalism and planting that seed of skepticism in all of his students is unparalleled,” said Ace Atkins, who is not a relative of Joe Atkins.

Joe Atkins was quick to adapt the academic life and its environment, recalls Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at Ole Miss. Husni served as acting chair of the journalism department the year Atkins was hired as an assistant professor. “Joe received a wake-up call when his first article he submitted for publication in an academic journal was rejected,” Husni said. “The reason for the rejection: ‘it is too journalistic.’

“Without abandoning his journalist credentials and skills Joe adapted quickly to the academic side of the profession and became an expert in balancing academia and the journalism profession.”

In 2003, Atkins organized an International Conference on Labor and the Southern Press, in which Ole Miss hosted speakers from throughout the U.S. and four different nations and offered panels on globalism, immigration, labor and media in the South and other changing societies.

His latest project is a book tentatively titled The Strangers Among Us that includes essays by writers from around the world discussing migrant worker issues.

Atkins has recruited David Bacon, an American author and journalist, and writers from places like Israel, China, Japan, England and India.

Atkins believes in what the South has to offer. While often times frustrated by economic, journalistic, and labor conditions in the South, he consistently advocates for change and solution.

Though he may not call himself an activist, it seems that Atkins attempts to satisfy a moral duty through his medium of print.

“I have been an activist at times in my life,” Atkins said. “But am I an activist now, well, I’m not much of one.

In my journalism I am an advocate of certain things, but I wouldn’t call myself an activist today.”

Ace Atkins said, “Every time I sit down with Joe and share a cocktail, his passion for reporting and muckraking gets me so fired up, I think about getting back into reporting and exposing all the crooks hoodwinking the public.”

Ed Meek, former assistant vice chancellor for public relations and marketing at the university, elaborated on this. “Joe is a remarkably capable journalist who shows passion in every piece he writes,” he said. “We don’t always agree, but never doubt my great respect for his ability and his vision.”

Meek donated funds that created the Meek School of Journalism and New Media. “Atkins has helped shape the skills of so many of the Meek students,” he said, “instilling in them his commitment for excellence and the importance of a free press.”

Atkins teaches courses that reflect his writing specialty such as media ethics and social issues, international journalism, media history, advanced reporting, and the press and the South. His vast knowledge and experience in these subjects allow Atkins to teach beyond the textbook.

Being as opinionated as Atkins is on these topics, he is careful to remain neutral in the classroom setting.

“As a teacher I do not try to indoctrinate my students,” Atkins said. “I want them to think for themselves. But I do try to educate them to see a broader world and expose them to alternatives in media.”

Atkins says that what he particularly likes about the Meek School is everyone’s commitment to continuing good journalism, and he thinks the school is set in a good place.

“The South is uniquely positioned to really tap into a proud tradition of good writing,” Atkins said. “Good writing means good reporting. Mississippi, despite its various problems, values and is proud of good writers. Ole Miss is right in the middle of that tradition.”

Perhaps Ace Atkins said it best: “Joe Atkins is a figure from the golden age of print and would look pretty damn natural in a fedora with his press pass in the hatband.”

The author is a junior, IMC major from Winona, Mississippi.

MEEK SCHOOL 79

FACULTY highlights

Top row: Robert Magee and Evangeline W. Robinson. Bottom row: Alysia Steele and Chris Canty Sparks

80 MEEK SCHOOL

NEW FACULTY

By Charlie Mitchell The faculty of the Meek School of Journalism and New Media grows by four in Fall 2014 with three professionals in residence transitioning into faculty position and one new professor who will be relocating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Three of the new faculty will teach primarily in the surging Integrated Marketing Communications degree program, and one primarily will teach visual journalism.

The three in IMC are Robert Magee, coming to the Meek School from Virginia Tech, and Evangeline Robinson and Chris Canty Sparks, who had been professionals in residence.

Teaching photojournalism, primarily, will be Alysia Steele, who served her first two years on the faculty as a professional in residence.

All join the faculty after national searches and at the rank of assistant professor.

“The IMC program is striving to be on the cutting edge of the industry,” Magee said after accepting the appointment at the University of Mississippi. “I’m pleased to be joining top-notch faculty.”

Selecting faculty is a two-way process. After new positions are advertised, a search committee reviews all applicants and invites the most qualified for campus visits. It’s on those visits that the prospective faculty member evaluates the school.

“I was particularly impressed by the quality of the IMC students,” Magee said. “They are eager, they are demanding, and they are not afraid of working hard.”

Magee has spent much of his life in the South.

His bachelor’s degree is from Belmont University in Tennessee. He has master’s degrees from Vanderbilt University and the University of Miami and earned a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a vibrant record of research and publications in his interest areas: new media, persuasion, integrated marketing communications, media psychology and media research. He has taught 10 different undergraduate and graduate

courses and has been an adviser for more than a dozen theses and dissertations.

“I enjoy involving motivated students in the research process so that they can learn first-hand how to generate new knowledge,” Magee said. “Students learn more by doing than by merely reading. They also become excited about discovering something that no one ever knew.

“I plan to offer students the opportunity to become involved in experimental research to discover how people are, or are not, persuaded by the messages they encounter,” he continued.

Robinson, like Steele, has served two years as a professional in residence. Since arriving on campus, she has taught the introduction to integrated marketing communications and introduction to writing for integrated marketing communications courses, prepared and edited monthly alumni newsletters and Meek School, the annual alumni magazine.

Robinson’s background includes working in development and marketing for nonprofit organizations in Missouri, California and Mississippi. She grew up in Rolling Fork, has an undergraduate degree from Jackson State University and master’s degrees from Jackson State and from the University of Mississippi.

She’s pursuing a doctoral degree at Ole Miss.

“I am so pleased to continue as a member of the Meek School faculty,” Robinson said. “We have so many talented students who are working very hard to prepare for their careers, and it is rewarding to play a role in their development.”

Steele comes to Ole Miss from Ohio University, where she earned her master’s, and from a background in photojournalism at The Columbus Dispatch; the Dallas Morning News, where she was night photo editor and part of the team receiving a Pulitzer for its photo coverage of Hurricane Katrina; and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where she was enterprise photo editor. She also has many additional awards for her work and has been teaching Photojournalism and Advanced Photojournalism for the most part.

Subscribers to Southern Living magazine might be familiar with her work though this year’s May edition,

which featured some of the photos and stories she has gathered for her book, Jewels of the Delta. It features women in the Mississippi Delta who have served as mothers in their respective church congregations.

“I am very proud to be joining a talented school as an assistant professor,” Steele said. “This is an exciting time, with our students and faculty all doing wonderful work, and it’s an honor to join.

“I believe in the direction of our school,” she continued. “The quality of work everyone is producing is exciting. I love teaching here and feel right at home.”

Sparks also joins the professorial ranks with impressive academic and professional credentials. Her undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi is a double major in both marketing and management, and she earned an MBA from the Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University in both marketing and organization management.

Next came 25 years in the marketing and communications industry with the Fortune 100 companies, The Coca-Cola Company and Ogilvy & Mather, among other firms. With a leadership role in 360 marketing campaigns for clients including AMC Theatres, Royal Caribbean, Newell Rubbermaid and Graco Baby Products, she has been on the front lines of new thinking and new approaches to marketing.

As a professional in residence, Sparks taught Creative Development and Design as well as Campaigns and has led students in preparing to conduct the research, develop the ideas and materials, make the presentations and study the outcomes for clients.

“I am honored to join this faculty,” she said. “In today’s rapidly evolving world, it is important to present students with theory supported with real world application to prepare them for success after graduation. The Meek School students are engaged and eager to learn. It is a pleasure to work with the students and faculty at Ole Miss.”

The author is assistant dean of the Meek School and an assistant professor.

MEEK SCHOOL 81

FACULTY highlights

Dr. Nancy Dupont spent the winter intersession in Togo with journalism freshman Sudu Upadhyay. They were in West Africa documenting the Ole Miss chapter of Engineers Without Borders, which was finishing construction of a school. Dupont and Upadhyay have already produced several print and video stories and are currently working on a documentary.

Dupont was on sabbatical during the spring semester completing work on a book and beginning work on another.

82 MEEK SCHOOL

Vanessa Gregory’s feature, “Long Division,” about a troubled housing project in the Mississippi Delta, appeared in the June issue of Harper’s magazine.

She also writes frequently for Garden & Gun magazine. Her contributions this year included a feature on South Carolina photographer Kathleen Robbins, a travel story about cycling in Louisville, Kentucky, and an essay about her dog.

The essay has been chosen for inclusion in a forthcoming anthology. In September she spoke, along with Professor Samir Husni and Assistant Professor Darren Sanefski, at the CPR for Magazine Media workshop at the Publishing Business Conference in New York.

In this, her second year at the Meek School, Mikki K. Harris completed work for The Gordon Commission on the Future of Assessment in Education that she had assumed since the fall of 2011. Her work there included the production and implementation of marketing strategies and multimedia content. Harris also served as the director and editor of marketing photography for the National Urban League’s National Conference in 2013.

And her images on therapy for veterans with PTSD were featured on A1 of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her global work this year included “Beyond Stereotype: Authentic Engagement and Communicating the Lived Experiences and Identities of Black Men and Boys” at the South Africa Communication Association Conference in South Africa.

The presentation was a synthesis of many of the stories that she continues to document of high-achieving students in the Mississippi Delta.

Cynthia Joyce wrote about media and technology for The Writer magazine (“Not for Robots,” July 2013) and the growing influence of massive open online courses (MOOCs) for The Clarion Ledger (“Latest tech craze puts higher ed and online learning back in the spotlight,” October 29, 2013). She also co-produced remote live broadcasts of Thacker Mountain Radio at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi, (June 2013) and at the Mary C O’Keefe Cultural Center of Arts & Education in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, (August 2013). Recently, as part of the UM STUDY USA program, she led a group of eight journalism students on a week-long excursion in New Orleans, where they studied “Media Ethics in a Changing Landscape.”

Darren Sanefski has had many design projects this year. He designed the magazine “Reflections on Freedom” for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. He updated the brand, created the social media and marketing strategy and designed the print and online presence for Neilson’s Department Store in Oxford, Mississippi. In May 2013 he spoke at the City and Regional Magazine Associations annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia, about the future of design.

In September he spoke, along with Professor Samir Husni and Assistant Professor Vanessa Gregory, at the CPR for Magazine Media workshop at the Publishing Business Conference in New York. In November he organized SNDU, a day of presentations aimed at student attendees at Society for News Design’s annual workshop in Louisville, Kentucky. In February he was named “Lead Facilitator” for the most coveted category, “World’s Best,” during SND’s 35th Annual Creative Competition in Syracuse, New York.

Professor Brad Schultz produced a half-hour television program on the 30th anniversary of the 1983 Egg Bowl game. “The Immaculate Deflection” aired on statewide public television the week of Thanksgiving and again in December. The fourth edition of his book, Media Relations in Sport, was published, as was a book chapter “Local Television Sports and the Internet” in the Routledge Handbook of Sport and New Media.

Robin Street, lecturer, was named PR Professional of the Year by the Public Relations Association of Mississippi at their annual conference and represented the state in the Southern Public Relations Federation competition in September. Street also presented at the PRAM conference on earning the accreditation in public relations. She has published two articles in Boomer magazine on health topics, and one in Mud and Magnolias magazine on the Thacker Mount Radio show. She also took her students to Memphis, Tennessee, where they met with five Ole Miss graduates who work in PR at FedEx, and with PR professionals at St. Jude Children¹s Research Hospital.

Dr. Kristen Alley Swain is principal investigator on a $114,366 U.S. Department of Transportation grant that analyzes branding metrics for thousands of transportation companies and news coverage of nearly 6,000 major transportation-related toxic spills. She presented her research and teaching ideas at the AEJMC and National Public Health Information Coalition conventions. Swain serves on the advisory board for the international Planet Forward University Consortium. In collaboration with Washington, D.C.-based television producers, her students will produce prominent national video features, blog, and participate in a policy salon series, production training, and annual summit.

Over the last five years, Planet Forward has featured hundreds of her students’ videos, including front-page highlights and webisodes. Through a student engagement teaching fellowship from the UM Center for Writing and Rhetoric, Swain is developing an explanatory writing module for several journalism courses. As part of this project, her reporting class covered a real-time, counter-terrorism national tabletop exercise.

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FACULTY highlights

Deb Wenger completed the third edition of her textbook, Advancing the Story: Journalism in a Multimedia World.

The updated book adds content on mobile and social media, as well as personal branding. In addition, Wenger, along with veteran TV news manager Hank Price and colleague Samir Husni are under contract with Sage Publications to write a book about managing media in a digital age. Wenger’s research with colleague Pat Thompson will be featured in a special issue of Electronic News in July 2014, one focused on the impact of mobile on the news business.

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Dr. Kathleen Wickham started off the year with a research grant awarded by the Film & Media Archive at Washington University, enabling her to spend a week in St. Louis conducting research relating to the documentary “Eyes on the Prize.” The result was a paper presented at the American Journalism Historians conference in New Orleans, where she also participated in a panel discussion on civil rights coverage.

Wickham was also invited to participate in an online discussion about teaching hosted by Steve Buttry, digital transformation editor for Digital First Media.

Other highlights were invitations to judge the National Headliner Journalism Awards and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers awards.

This fall, University Press of Mississippi will publish Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians and Other Persons of Interest: Fifty Pieces from the Road, a collection of newspaper and magazine stories

by Curtis Wilkie, drawn from his four decades as a journalist and selected with an emphasis on those set in the South.

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