Sad Times for Journalists

We live in a Through–the–Looking–Glass kind of world — where everything is the opposite of what it should be.

I tend to see that contradictory nature most vividly in my field of study, journalism — or, put in more general terms, communication.

Sometimes I look back on the scope of my life, and it takes my breath away to realize how much things have changed — I mean everything.

When I was growing up, we had three TV networks. Today, we have hundreds of options.

When I was in graduate school and I had research to do, I had to go to the university library, and I might spend days looking for one item. I guess you still need to spend some time in the library, but today, a lot of that legwork can be done from the comfort of your home with your laptop or desktop computer.

When I was a child, I expected it to take hours, days, maybe weeks to get a response to an inquiry about something. Today, people get agitated if takes more than a few minutes.

Modern people seem to think it is their right to have immediate access to any information they want whenever they want it — but they forget (if they ever really acknowledged it to begin with) that someone still has to do the dirty work.

With the entire world seemingly in turmoil — never mind the political squabbling in this country (and the only thing new about that is probably the intensity, which is a byproduct of all the information delivery methods that are available to us today) — it may never have been more important to have good, experienced journalists on the ground where events are unfolding.

Modern technology makes it possible for those journalists to transmit their findings halfway around the globe in a matter of minutes, if not seconds — but that doesn't change the fact that they put their lives on the line to do it.

And sometimes they lose those lives.

This morning, news reaches these shores that an American journalist and a French journalist have been killed in heavy shelling in Syria.

I don't know if much will be made of their deaths in this country. The American journalist was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN hours before her death, but neither was a household name here.

Neither, for that matter, was Anthony Shadid, a New York Times journalist who died recently of an apparent asthma attack while covering the conflict in Syria.

Shadid's death got some notice in this country, mostly from other journalists who were familiar with the two–time Pulitzer Prize–winner's work.

But it was overshadowed by the extensive coverage of the death of pop star Whitney Houston.

I'm not sure what that says about our national priorities (and I mean no disrespect to Houston — 48 is too young for anyone to die).

But it can't be good.

Too many people are under the mistaken impression that citizen journalists with no training in journalism can do the job as well as professional journalists can.

Whenever I hear people saying that the man in the street, equipped with a laptop, can gather news efficiently and adequately, I want to ask something like this:

• Would you permit a citizen doctor to perform surgery on you?


• Would you trust a citizen architect to design your home or workplace?

As the son (and grandson) of trained educators, there was a time when I included citizen teacher on that list, too — but Rick Santorum has taken some of the wind out of those sails.

It isn't that I agree with Santorum. I don't. And I believe the decline in national standards that would inevitably result from a mass decision to home school a majority of American children would prove my point.

But Santorum is riding the crest of a semi–popular position — so it isn't an effective argument for me at the moment.

Still, it doesn't change the fact that it has always taken training to do the demanding jobs the way they need to be done.

There can be no more demanding job, I think, than reporting from a war zone.

The training and experience those three journalists had was invaluable — and their loss cannot be measured.

Life Influences

In every life, I suppose, there is a point when someone influences that life and nudges it in the direction that ultimately will define it for good or ill.

Sometimes, people have several influences like that. I was one of those people. My mother really got the ball rolling, encouraging me to write from a young age. Her mother–in–law — who went to college at a time when that was not the sort of thing most young women did and had gone on to a career as an English teacher — reinforced the message.

There were certainly influences on me from outside the family. When I got to high school, I came under the influence of my journalism teacher, who took the rare step of keeping me on the newspaper staff for a second year even though her practice had been to do that only for those students she had chosen to be the editor of the paper.

The baton had been passed.

I was, thus, encouraged to pursue journalism in college, where I learned reporting from a man who built his reputation as a reporter for the New York Times and the paper where I later worked for nearly five years, the Arkansas Gazette. And, of course, in college, I learned about the great journalists who were before my time and whose influence can still be seen in professional newsgathering today, even though the tools that are used and the methods by which the news is delivered are far different from what they knew.

Then I entered the world of professional journalism and embarked on a path that eventually brought me back to the classroom, where I remained for four years. Then, for reasons I prefer not to discuss here, I gravitated in a different direction.

Life does that to you sometimes. Some people follow storybook career paths that seem to have been etched in stone from the moments of their birth. Others follow more fluid paths that twist and turn, perhaps taking them completely away from their original objectives.

"Some folks' lives roll easy," sang Paul Simon. "Some folks' lives never roll at all."

And some folks — like Roy Hobbs in "The Natural" — sorta get sidetracked.

I guess that's what happened to me. But I hope I'm moving in the right direction again. In precisely one month, I will start a new job as an adjunct (i.e., part time) journalism instructor at the local community college. I've been trying to prepare myself to enter a classroom for the first time in 14 years, and I'm already anticipating the many ways I could stumble.

But I'm also thinking of those who influenced me along the way and trying to remember the things they taught me. Because I want to be able to pass along to my students their desire to seek the truth, their commitment, their integrity.

If I can do that, then my efforts — and the efforts of all who influenced me — will not be in vain.

In my formative years, there were many influences I never met — Woodward and Bernstein, whose determined reporting reminded everyone how important the journalist's watchdog role is in a democracy; Walter Cronkite, who was probably more trusted than any man except maybe the pope; Mike Royko, a columnist whose writing I once compared to another great American journalist, Mark Twain, in a paper I wrote in college.

And a fellow named Daniel Schorr, who occupies a unique role in the story of the Watergate scandal.

In late June 1973, John Dean revealed in his Senate Watergate committee testimony the existence of Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies' list" — a list of prominent people from a variety of professions who were perceived as enemies by the Nixon White House.

Schorr, a protege of Edward R. Murrow, was a correspondent for CBS News in those days. The list had been submitted as evidence, but it had not been reviewed by anyone at CBS. Schorr was asked to read the list on the air and was startled to come across his own name at #17.

"I tried not to gulp," Schorr told PBS' Terence Smith, "I tried not to gasp. So I read on. Mary McGrory, Paul Newman, now back to you."

I always liked Dan Schorr. He was an unassuming sort, always aware of the important people and important events on which he reported (and his career spanned the second half of the 20th century) but seldom self–conscious. I remember reading a paperback copy of his book, "Clearing the Air," when I was in college.

It was one of the most inspiring books I've ever read.

So I was saddened when Schorr — who was about the same age as Cronkite, who died a little more than a year ago — died earlier today. He was 93, the victim of an unidentified illness.

I was sadder, though, to learn of the passing of another influence on my life, a fellow named Michael Gauldin.

I went to college with Mike. We worked on the school newspaper together at the University of Arkansas. I was assigned the student government beat when I was taking reporting, and the student paper picked up my articles. I wound up covering student government for Gauldin and the rest of the editorial staff for a couple of years.

I was acquainted with Mike, but I wouldn't say we were friends. We didn't go out for a beer together after exams or anything like that, but I learned a lot about dedication from his example.

And he had a lot of talent. Everyone saw that, I think — the journalism faculty, his classmates, everyone. Gauldin was a military journalist between his high school graduation and his enrollment in college, then he wrote and edited some after graduating and served as press secretary to Bill Clinton when he was governor, but I always felt cartooning was his true calling. He used it in many of his jobs. And he did so masterfully.

After I graduated from college (the year after Gauldin did, although he was several years older and had already married and begun his family by the time we met), I saw his cartoons in newspapers from time to time, and I remember clipping one that was always my favorite. It was drawn to mimic the old–fashioned "tale of the tape" boxing posters that showed both fighters in an upcoming bout with their height, weight, reach, etc., listed below their pictures. Above their pictures were their names and the nicknames by which they were known.

Bill Clinton was beaten for re–election while Gauldin and I were in college. In those days, Arkansas' governor was elected to two–year terms so Clinton ran again two years later and faced the man who had beaten him in the last election.

Both Gauldin and I had graduated from college by that time. I was working as a general assignment reporter. He was working as a reporter and, apparently, a freelance cartoonist as well. His cartoon presented that electoral battle as a boxing rematch, with Clinton's nickname "The Comeback Kid," neatly summarizing the entertainment angle of that campaign.

That was 10 years before Clinton claimed that the voters in New Hampshire had made him the Comeback Kid. And that cartoon remained on my refrigerator until I took a new job and left that apartment.

Anyway, Gauldin, too, passed away today. Apparently, he was a victim of cancer.

Next month, when I'm addressing my students, I hope I will be guided by the memory of these two dedicated journalists.

The LBJ Era Departs

---

---

For many years, I worked in a building that was located along LBJ Freeway here in Dallas.

I worked for an auto loan company, and I often had to call people — customers, dealers — and sometimes those calls required me to give them our mailing address. More than one gave me a questioning response when I told them the street address.

"LBJ stands for Lyndon Baines Johnson," I would tell them. If that produced no knowing response, I elaborated. "He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy." That was usually sufficient. The people with whom I spoke were not always old enough to remember Johnson, but they recognized Kennedy's name.

Those conversations always struck me as odd because, when I was a child, everyone knew what LBJ stood for.

I was still quite young when he left the White House. I knew his first name was Lyndon and his last name was Johnson. I had heard him called Lyndon B. Johnson. I'm not sure if I knew exactly what his middle name was, but I had heard plenty of people refer to the president as LBJ.

There always seemed to be footage on the evening news of angry college students marching in protests against the war and chanting things like "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?"

I mean, unless you were deaf, dumb and blind (or, perhaps, just plain Forrest Gump stupid), just about everyone who was alive in those days knew what LBJ stood for!

My father was a college professor, and I knew some of his students. And they not only knew what LBJ stood for, most of them seemed to think LBJ was going to be around forever.

That wasn't true, of course. As I say, he left the presidency in 1969 after choosing not to run for another term; then, in one of those ironic twists of history, he died of a heart attack two days after that term would have ended.

Thus, he proved all those predictions of his immortality to be indisputably wrong in rather short order.

And, one by one, most of the figures from Johnson's administration have left the earthly scene as well. His secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, died last summer, and then today, two more people from the LBJ days — Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and Liz Carpenter, a close aide to both President and Mrs. Johnson for many years — have died.

Udall was 90. Carpenter was 89.

It strikes me as ironic that not one but two people from the Johnson presidency should die within a week of the 45th anniversary of what is arguably the most significant speech that Johnson ever gave.

On March 15, 1965, Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to press for the passage of the Voting Rights Act about a week after the infamous "Bloody Sunday" confrontation in Selma, Ala., during the first Selma–to–Montgomery voting rights march.

---

---

He adopted a line from the protest song that had become synonymous with the civil rights movement as he took a stand against discrimination in the most public way that a president can. On that evening, Johnson said, "Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."

My mother was active in the Human Relations Council in my hometown in Arkansas when I was growing up, and I know from speaking with many of the black members in those days that they were deeply moved and inspired to hear the president of the United States use a phrase that was so closely linked to "the struggle," as they called it. That was one of the last things that most of them had ever expected to see in their lifetimes.

---

---

Language has power. It isn't always how much you know but how you express it that makes the impression. And, in Johnson's case, what he knew (which was the moral and ethical thing to do) and the best way to express it came together at a crossroads in American history.

There is no denying that there was plenty of deception and trickery from the Johnson administration when it came to its policy on Vietnam. But, on March 15, 1965, he spoke to — and, perhaps, with the assistance of — what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature."

It may have been the shining moment of Johnson's life and presidency.

They Lived Wonderful Lives

When the Christmas season is upon us, one of the essential parts of the holiday for many people is spending a couple of hours watching "It's A Wonderful Life," the 1946 Frank Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore.

It's been more than 60 years since that film was made, and it has achieved a level of popularity in recent decades that it never reached when it was showing in movie theaters.

It has developed such a devoted fan base that it will be a holiday classic for generations to come.

Nearly everyone who appeared in that film is dead now. I'm reminded of that fact after hearing the news that Bob Anderson, who played the young incarnation of Stewart's George Bailey character at the age of 13, died the other day at the age of 75.

He was nearly the last surviving cast member.

As far as I know, that leaves only Karolyn Grimes, who was about 5 or 6 years old when she played Stewart's youngest child, Zuzu, in the movie. She will be 68 on Independence Day.

Anderson tried to pursue an acting career after appearing in "It's A Wonderful Life" -- he even landed a role in "The Bishop's Wife" the following year and appeared on a few TV shows, like "I Love Lucy" -- but his acting career was over by the time he was in his mid-20s.

He managed to stay in the business, doing some directing and performing some stunts. He was also a production manager, a supervising animator and a grip.

The same day that Anderson died, former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Dwight White passed away at the age of 58, the apparent victim of a blood clot in his lung.

Most people probably don't remember White. He wasn't as well known as his more famous Steeler teammates -- and on the defensive side of the ball, that included the likes of Mean Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham and Mel Blount.

But he played a pivotal role in the Steelers' championship years of the 1970s.

When Pittsburgh went to its first-ever Super Bowl (in Super Bowl IX), the Steelers were matched up against a Minnesota Vikings team that had been frustrated in two earlier Super Bowl appearances in the previous five years. Oddsmakers felt the Steelers would add to the Vikings' woes and made them 3-point favorites in a game that matched two of the NFL's best defensive units.

The first half was nearly a scoreless draw, but White tackled Minnesota quarterback Fran Tarkenton for a safety and Pittsburgh led, 2-0, at halftime. It was Pittsburgh's first-ever score in a Super Bowl, and the Steelers went on to win the game, 16-6.

Pittsburgh won three more Super Bowls in that decade, and White was on all those teams. He retired in 1980 and worked as a stock broker in his post-NFL career.

For Anderson and White, their lives may not have been ideal. Few are. But I don't know anyone who would argue that their lives weren't wonderful.