(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Augusta Press.)
Earlier this week, The Augusta Press celebrated its second anniversary, and we ran a sweet column by Scott Hudson in which he recounted the history of how this newspaper came into being, with an emphasis on the relationship he and I developed over the last 20 years.
In that story, he noted that I’d never given him an A in any class he had with me.
One comment on the story asked if I’d ever given an A to anyone.
The answer to that question is, “No.” I never gave anyone an A or a C or an F. I simply recorded the grades students earned in my classes.
I think the more relevant question is, why was it so hard to earn an A in Dr. van Tuyll’s classes. It’s not like I ever won a Pulitzer or worked for the New York Times or the Washington Post or one of the network news organizations. But as a journalism historian with a PH.D., nine books and a couple life-time achievement awards under my belt, I can say I’ve read and studied the field from just about every angle possible. As a journalist, I’ve covered kind of story from the last tar and feathering in Alabama to tear-jerker Christmas features to environmental issues.
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My passion for journalism is strong and has been most of my life, and that’s what I worked so very hard to instill in my students – passion. Passion for truth, passion for service, passion for the public’s right to know.
I don’t play where journalism is concerned. I have high expectations and standards for anyone who thinks he or she wants to become a journalist. Students who who didn’t give 110 percent, who blew off deadlines, who tried to charm me with fluff – I really didn’t have patience for them.
I am too aware of the journalist’s social responsibilities – and also profoundly aware that too many of my professional colleagues seem to have forgotten those responsibilities or forget them when it’s inconvenient to remember them. That’s why I don’t play.
Remember Mr. Spock’s eyebrow raise in the first Start Trek? Any student who got more than two or three of those probably needed to slink on over to the Registrar’s Office and change his or her major.
I wasn’t about to turn students loose in MY field with MY imprimatur (that A) unless I was certain they were both passionate and properly groomed to produce journalism that didn’t cut corners.
That answer is maybe more complicated than it would be for more academic fields where grades are pretty much based on mastery of certain material alone.
Journalism is different from a standard academic discipline.
Journalism students have academic material to master, but they also have a whole range of professional skills to acquire before they graduate, including ethics and an understanding of their obligations to their readers.
They can’t just learn those things. They have to live them, but that takes life experience as well as professional experience, time in the trenches applying what they learned and the skills they developed in class. We can mint an entry level reporter at the collegiate level, and they’ll all make As in some of their classes, just like Scott did. But to become a Walter Cronkite, an Ed Bradley, a Seymour Hersh, a Dorothy Thompson or Edward R. Murrow takes some time in the field, and by that I mean more than a 120-hour internship.
A few students rise to that level, and most get As in some classes. Others get As in other classes. Just like Scott did. But most undergraduates just are not serious yet about their potential careers. A student who gets a B+? He’s so close. So close he just needs to stretch just a little bit farther, his passion has to grow just a little bit stronger – enough that he gets serious about language (commas, sentence structure, attribution, AP Style) or maybe about differentiating between opinion and fact or maybe ethics or . . . .
So close, maybe I just needed to start a newspaper with him.
Debbie Reddin van Tuyll is editor-in-chief of The Augusta Press. Reach her at debbie@theaugustapress.com
