By DARYL FRAZELL
News-editorial department
chairman
The news-editorial department’s candidate for toughest course in the university is advanced reporting.
It is legendary among graduates for its heavy work load and high standards. Graduates remember it long after more conventional courses have faded away into the past. Alumni remember not only the rigor but also the reward: unexcelled preparation for careers in journalism.
The course is central to the news-editorial curriculum, which is noted for its long, grueling labs and abundance of constructive criticism. Students are required to dig up stories from “beats,” such as city government or agriculture, as well as fulfill a variety of assignments imposed by instructors and student editors.
Advanced reporting has been around longer even than Bud Pagel, who taught it for many years along with Dick Streckfuss. That team of beloved professors had its own grading system, which required students to score points and achieve a certain total by the midterm “hump” or drop out and start over. That sounds mean but wasn’t because everybody knew Pagel and Streckfuss had only the students’ best interests at heart.
A new team, John Bender and Charlyne Berens, is now in charge and has changed the system slightly but hasn’t reduced the rigor. Bender and Berens are no more lenient than their predecessors — and no less supportive.
Students who do well in advanced reporting have the right stuff. They possess the attitudes the faculty has listed in its mission statement: compassion, detachment, diligence, energy, honesty, humility, self-discipline, a sense of fairness and a social conscience.
Reporting students need compassion because they spend much of their time outside the classroom, meeting people and seeking to understand what others do and how others live.
They need detachment because they can’t allow their emotions to become wrapped too tightly around an issue they care about. They must stand back and look at all sides of a problem, then present it to the public with balance.
Diligence is essential because advanced reporting students must keep up with the class agenda. Those who fall behind find it difficult to catch up. Some have to drop the course and try again later.
Energy is required because reporting can be an exercise in frustration. News sources fail to return calls or decline to pour forth information without being prodded. A reporter who meets a stone wall must try to find a way around it, and the route can be arduous.
Students who learn the importance of honesty in advanced reporting are ahead of the game. They are certain to learn it eventually because dishonesty has a way of ending careers abruptly. A journalist who can’t be trusted won’t be in the field very long.
Arrogance won’t be helpful either. The chief task of reporters is to examine subjects they know only a little about, then inform the public accurately without condescending or oversimplifying. It is an exercise in humility.
Self-discipline is necessary because of deadlines. Assignments must be turned in on time, and turning them in is not the end of the matter. Instructors demand revisions and rewrites, and once those hurdles are cleared, inquisitive student editors step in with questions of their own. Seldom does the first draft of a news story make it all the way into print.
Reporting students must have a sense of fairness because one-sided stories won’t pass muster. Instructors require at least two sources, preferably more, in every article, and two sources saying the same thing are no better than one. Fairness to people who make news is a hallmark of responsible journalism, the only kind this college cares about.
Reporters need all these things and a social conscience as well. Journalists serve the powerless and annoy the powerful. Those interested only in themselves need not apply.
Advanced reporting may or may not be accurately called the toughest course in the university, but it is certainly one of the best.
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