By John Gaskins, a senior broadcasting major from Omaha and a Daily Nebraskan columnist. This column, which ran in the Oct. 12, 2002, DN is reprinted by permission.
Anna Kournikova … Now that I have your attention, here is a written transcript of a statement I made last week on 90.3 KRNU’s Thursday night (from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. — solid, intelligent, humorous sports talk and entertainment that even nonsports fans should listen to) show, Out-of-Bounds:
The following statement is not recruitment propaganda for the College of Journalism and Mass Comunications. It is also not a brown-nosing, kiss-up tribute to our professors and faculty. Just the truth … something we have been taught to find as students since day one.
This parting thought, my first on our little sports talk show, has nothing to do with sports but everything to do with journalism. And, technically, we run this little sports talk show out of the University of Nebraska’s new journalism building, Andersen Hall. I think it is more than appropriate for this aspiring journalist to talk about the college on our show.
Andersen Hall is our new breeding ground. It’s where tomorrow’s print scribes, TV broadcasters, radio hosts, disc jockeys, advertisers and public relations people learn their craft. How important is that? Well, just ask any student in this college and they’ll tell you this building isn’t just important, it’s special.
Because, for decades, in case you didn’t know, this college has been recognized as one of the finest in the nation — comprised of not just dedicated but accomplished faculty who stay here because they believe in their products-at-work.
And in case you didn’t know, thousands of successful products have come out of this college: Pulitzer Prize winners, major network reports and producers, ESPN and Fox Sports reporters and anchors, top-five radio market radio personalities and top-notch doctors, lawyers and Fortune 500 businessmen who got their degrees from this college. The college has won several national awards, and you can take a look at them in the new building’s glass awards case on the first floor.
But for everything this college has accomplished, it has been a hidden treasure to both the campus and the national scene for one reason — its ramshackle facilities. Any past or current journalism major can attest to that. We’ve learned and developed our talent in literally broom closets and cubby holes, with chewing gum, splitting wires and out-of-date studios and computers, in a place called Avery Hall, which we affectionately called “Slavery.”
Slavery was an embarrassment to show recruits. Somehow, the right students — like me, like the two people sitting next to me, like the thousands bringing you the news everyday — were attracted to the college by its competent, personable-to-almost-a-fault faculty, whom we could count on.
It was people that mattered to us, not facilities.
Now, we have the Palace of Versailles we always deserved, a building we can be proud of.
Dean Will Norton — who’s had offers to be the dean at more so-called prestigious universities and now looks like the proud father of a newborn child — said it on another radio show earlier this morning. Our quality college now has an identity that is appropriate — a top-notch identity. Now, recruits can see a killer combination of faculty and facility that will make them simply head-and-shoulders above the rest when they get into the real world.
Everything here seems so right. In light of the fact that this media world has become so much less specialized and more consolidated, with print and broadcast rolling into one on the Internet, we have a consolidated newsroom.
It’s a newsroom broadcasters and news-editorial specialists, two historically at-war factions, can unite to use. Print and broadcasting professors are all right next to each other in their bigger-than-broom-closet offices. This way, all of us will be ready to not just thrive in our chosen majors but in all aspects of the media.
The building is located on the edges of our campus and downtown Lincoln, where the city and state’s top government and businesses thrive. We are on the cutting edge of everything. After all, we’re going to be thrust into the real world anyway. We might as well be in it now.
The first time I entered Andersen, I just about wet my pants — which was OK because there was an actual spacious bathroom that wasn’t infested with asbestos. I saw the 13 televisions, the computers and the unified atmosphere of the newsroom and thought to myself: I’m here. I’m finally here!
I can speak for all journalism majors who have been closet supporters of our college but just a little too embarrassed to show it. We are now beaming with pride.
Many people disdain the media for its negativity, for its inaccuracy, for its unnecessary prodding, for its laziness. Well, the goal in this college is to develop journalists who will change all that, who will prove that this world could not run, and would be much worse off, without the printed word or spoken rhetoric. Especially without the well-printed word and the well-spoken rhetoric.
I dare you to find more than five college newspapers in this nation better written and produced than the Daily Nebraskan. I dare you to open up an issue of USA Today and forget that a former UNL professor helped create it. I dare you to find more than five broadcasting departments who have as many opportunities — from a student radio station that broadcasts several specialty shows and most major home sporting events to a pioneering organization like HuskerVision that has been imitated by nearly every major athletics department in the country — that makes its students veteran professionals before they graduate.
We are the future, and now we have the tools.
But this is not the glorious end of a fight that’s been waged way too long; it’s only the beginning. It makes me truly understand the words and carry them in my heart (at least when it comes to journalism): There Is No Place Like Nebraska.