Teaching: The Story I Wasn’t Prepared to Write

In more than 35 years as a journalist, I never feared prisons, shooting galleries, gangsters, or power-obsessed politicians. Nor did combat zones in Ukraine or Gaza faze me. But a class of 20-year-olds staring at me with blank expressions, waiting to hear something intelligent or instructive, terrified me.

I can handle, without much fuss, the immense pressures and responsibilities facing journalists. But the mandate to nurture a young mind seems almost God-like, a task for which I feel entirely inadequate.

I’m teaching my first class this year – news writing and reporting (pictured above with O’Brien Fellows Sylvia A. Harvey (SAH) and Abigail Kramer). It’s part of the job I took in August as director of the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

The job also includes recruiting fellows and overseeing their investigative projects. But, for me, teaching is the most foreign and intimidating.

“This should be easy,” a journalism faculty member told me before I started. “You know this stuff. You’ve done it.”

Yeah, but practicing and teaching journalism aren’t the same. How do I explain a process that for me has become second-nature, as natural as breathing? How do I teach determination, resilience, perseverance, passion, compassion, empathy, tenacity, courage, and all the other human qualities that are far more important for success than mere intelligence or talent?

Part of the problem with teaching journalism is that it reminds me I’m no longer a journalist. I sorely miss the maddening pace of daily journalism. I miss writing columns, news stories, and editorials that got people out of prison, brought a homeless addict into treatment, or changed an oppressive state law. The adrenaline of journalism is addicting. I haven't yet reached the early stage of recovery.

I tell myself I’m still making a difference but in another way. Now, it’s not about me and my work but losing my ego and helping others do great work. That’s what I tell myself. But sometimes I’m not listening.

True to my nature, I started my teaching journey by ignoring any advice I was given, such as don’t tell students this is my first class. I told them, anyway, on the first day. I didn’t want to appear to be an even bigger fool than I am. At any rate, the students didn’t seem to mind.

They respected my experience and accomplishments as a journalist and overlooked my lack of them as an instructor.

I was also told college students today can’t take criticism. I ignored that, too, and fired away. I found they will take criticism -- if they believe you care about them and want them to learn.

Two weeks after I started teaching, a journalism professor asked me how it was going.

“Ask my students,” I said. “Only they can tell you.”

Rarely do I feel it’s going well. Pacing in front of 17 students, I often feel like I’m talking to a wall. Still, there are moments of clarity when a student has a flash of insight or asks a particularly penetrating question. I see a lightbulb go on; I know I’ve connected.

Learning is more than memorizing an arranged collection of wayward facts. It’s a roar of light that illuminates the darkness within and rocks your world.

During one class, I pretended to be a politician and held a mock press conference, then took questions from the students, who pretended to be veteran journalists. They came alive. I saw them truly engaged and wondered why I couldn’t do that every day.

The landscape of journalism today is more challenging and treacherous than ever. My students don’t know what I know, but they don’t have to unlearn what I know, either.

Digital platforms and tools have created possibilities that are limited only by imagination, skill, and knowledge. For students, the “Golden Age of Journalism” is straight ahead, not in the rear-view.

It’s going to be a hell of a ride. I wish I could be there with them.

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Remembering Untold Stories

In America today, the lights are going out. Many urgent stories go untold.

Practically all the record number of journalists – more than 60 – applying for O’Brien Fellowships this year proposed projects in the best tradition of public service journalism: exposing wrongful convictions, the impact of climate change on cities, a rise in homelessness, mass incarceration, government coverups of environmental hazards, the unseen victims of the opioid epidemic, to name just a few.

Truth be told, dozens of these projects, and the impressive journalists who proposed them, were worthy of a nine-month O’Brien fellowship at Marquette University in Milwaukee. Unhappily, O’Brien can fund only four fellowships a year.

That means not only a line of disappointed people who put in the serious work of applying for a national fellowship, but also an immeasurable loss for the nation. Without funding, without a platform, many of these stories may never be told. Nor will the nation benefit from the difference those investigations would make in exposing injustice; creating a more just, equitable, and healthy society; and making state, local, and federal governments more accountable to the people.   

There are fewer and fewer places for journalists to do this invaluable work. Since 2005, the country has lost one-third of its newspapers – more than 3,200 have closed – and two thirds of its newspaper journalists. The legacy media outlets still standing are, mostly, shadows, with stripped-down staffs unequipped for investigative work.

Fewer journalists have steady gigs and more independent ones are looking for a way, anyway, to stay on the grind. For local news, especially, the problem isn’t demand – it’s supply.

Journalists aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. They ignore stories they shouldn’t. Too many of them are punking out, trying to curry favor with the very people they should be holding to account. Still, as the distinction between truth and lies blurs beyond recognition, most journalists still respect the truth enough to shine a light into the darkness. What happens when the lights go out?    

Sincere thanks to everyone who applied for an O’Brien Fellowship this year. I wish we had many more to hand out. Now more than ever, the country needs to have their stories told.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffery Gerritt is director of the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University in Milwaukee. 

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