The interviews, part of WOUB’s “Conversations from Studio B,” are available on the JSchool’s iTunes/podcast site. Those interviewed:

Smith “Smitty” Schuneman
Robert McChesney
John Kaplan
Bill Allard
Mike Webb
Alumni: Jessica Beinecke (VOA), Phil Ewing (Politico), Erica Ryan (NPR), and Lynn Walsh (Texas Watchdog)

It truly has been an honor and a thrill to have been director of the school that gave me my undergraduate degree. Besides a top-flight education, it has given me life-long friendships among our alumni and some of the country’s media elite.

I have had a continual love affair with this school for over four decades and those powerful feelings have only grown with each new class of students and each new innovation in journalism education that we have implemented.

In every career, there is a time to begin — a time to meet new challenges — and a time to say goodbye. It is now time for me to do the latter…to step down as director and take my place among the faculty of this fine school. Although in a new capacity, I will continue to serve students — in a different yet just as important way — as a teacher and mentor.

Over the past seven years, we made great strides in bringing new faculty to the school, upgrading our curriculum, and raising substantial outside money to support our students and their dreams. We have pumped up enrollment and kept the quality of our student body high. We are one of the top journalism schools in the country and that is something in which I take great pride.

I want to thank my colleagues on the faculty and our dedicated staff for all of their substantial contributions.

It is time, however, to turn the reins over to new leadership — a new generation. It’s time for even newer ideas, newer approaches to journalism education, and new energy. I have every confidence that the new director, Dr. Robert Stewart, and his team will take the school to even greater heights. He will bring his steady hand and innovative mind to the directorship and motivate his colleagues to bring new vitality to the school.

We are poised on the precipice of being an even greater school than we are today. We must ever press forward and push ourselves to more substantial accomplishments and even higher standards. The media world is changing and we are at the center of that revolution.

I leave the directorship with a sense of pride in what we accomplished but with an even greater hope and dream of what tomorrow can bring.

I recently attended an Associated Press training program at the Columbus Dispatch about multimedia storytelling and new technological software designed to help us, as journalists, convey and package information in more interesting and efficient ways.

Although in many ways the sessions were eye-opening, much of the information was reaffirming of what we, at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism, are already doing — teaching solid journalism and promoting innovation.

While we are deeply rooted in teaching the fundamentals of journalism — accuracy, thoroughness, clarity, fairness and ethics, we also are exploring multiple delivery methods and storytelling techniques. Our students are receive a foundation in not only how to write but how to present a story in multiple ways — how to use technology to enhance understanding.

We have been a leader in online journalism education and many of our existing classes have been reformatted to include even more multimedia dimensions. New classes are being introduced and a major curriculum revision is underway to correspond with the university’s shift from academic quarters to semesters in the fall of 2012.

We also have added new faculty who are steeped in multimedia formats, social networking, mobile means of conveying news and information while still grounded in solid journalistic traditions. Over the past two years, we have added six new faculty faces and this year alone four new faculty members have joined us. All have extensive professional experience as well as top-flight academic credentials.

These new faculty members bring us up-to-date expertise in computer assisted reporting, online journalism, multimedia storytelling, video, global journalism, history, and media economics. Next year, we will add yet another faculty member in the areas of graphics, multimedia, and conceptual design.

These new faculty, together with the professors who have been on staff for decades, are helping our students launch careers that not only are adaptable to the myriad of technological changes facing our industry, but also will shape the future of the media industry. These professors are teaching our students to be innovative and to ponder new and different ways of delivering news to emerging generations.

In addition to adding faculty, we are improving the School’s multimedia capabilities. Our computer labs have been upgraded; new video editing software has been added; and all classrooms provide multimedia teaching capabilities.

We also are reaching out through the use of videoconferencing technology to bring our students the expertise of working professionals from all over the country. For example, nationally known freelance producer and new media aficionado Peter Shaplen has shared his expertise and perspective with our students every Friday morning this quarter from his home in California.

Our students also joined Montclair State University students in a sports ethics panel live and direct from the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center. Our group participated in the discussion through computer generated questions.

We are using Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media while our students are learning techniques for using social media effectively to advance journalism.

Innovative technologies and the changing landscape of media may be frightening to many but we at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism embrace the changes.

We are preparing the journalists of tomorrow. They will have a strong foundation in journalistic skills and ethics and will be able to easily maneuver through the maze of changes in delivery systems.

As always, however, we need suggestions. What should we include in our curriculum and what equipment is needed to stay abreast or ahead of changes on the horizon? If you have information that you think would be helpful, please write to me at hodson@ohio.edu.

Mel embodied a rare combination of talent, professional acumen, caring and wit that put him into a special category. He is missed by his colleagues; he is missed by his community and, most of all, he is missed by his former students.

Their loyalty to him and praise of him through the years is the best tribute any teacher can receive. They attest to the contribution he made to their lives. Mel’s hundreds of alumni are truly his living legacy carrying on his humor and zest for life.

Although Mel had a spectacular career in advertising and public relations before coming to Ohio University, he was first and foremost an outstanding teacher. He was a man who could teach anything from sports marketing, public relations, and advertising to comedy. His versatility in the classroom was unmatched.

His student evaluations were always at the top of the charts and as a result he received numerous teaching honors including being selected by the student body as a “University Professor” in 1982-83.

His regular teaching was stellar but Mel always was so creative. He hit the national scene as a teacher with his inventive comedy writing class where students wrote and publicly performed their own material. The class lasted for years and spawned a number of big-time comedy writers.

Humor was always the underpinning of Mel’s relationships with students and colleagues. Every time I spoke with Mel, either formally or informally, he began the conversation with a joke or a humorous observation. He always wanted to put the other party at ease.

Mel was a generous man with his talents and gifts. He not only gave to his students but to people he mentored. I was one of those lucky people. In my early career as an elected judge, Mel often gave me political advice and tips on how to warm up an audience or spice up a dull legal talk by using a bit of humor.

He would often grab me in the JSchool hallway to offer career advice which was always laced with humor. He mentored me and guided me gently down a path without me even knowing it. He was a master at giving guidance without being heavy-handed about it.

Sometimes, I understood what he was saying and sometimes it was not immediately clear to me. But, then later, I would look back at a situation and say, “Oh, that’s what Mel meant.” His assessments were almost always right on target.

Mel also gave of himself to his adopted community of Athens, Ohio. He was a visible presence at almost every event and even in his later years, when his health was failing, Mel would rally and emcee charity events to raise money for worthy community causes.

A true measure of a person’s life is not found in awards received, although Mel received many. Instead, it is valued by the number of people touched in a positive way. In that sense, Mel cut a broad swath through life…touching thousands of people and students — always leaving them with a positive and humorous piece of himself.

Mel is missed.

Please celebrate Mel’s life at 1:30 p.m. this Saturday, August 8, at Christ Lutheran Church on Mill St. in Athens, Ohio.

Tom Hodson, Director

You are part of a noteworthy trend: young people flocking to journalism as an exciting new career with great employment potential.

Many who read those words will question my sanity. How can my predictions be true — especially when so many of my contemporaries are decrying the death of “journalism” as they have known it throughout their long, illustrious, and meaningful careers?

It’s because journalism is not dead at all. It’s just morphing and changing and the changes are coming at warp speed.

Too many “old-timers” see the demise of metro dailies and the decline in local television news numbers and prematurely pronounce journalism as being dead-on-arrival. To make such a pronouncement demonstrates our limited view of the expanding media world.

Instead of seeing journalism on its last leg, our students and other media observers see the field as being at the raw beginnings of a revolution in communication techniques and methods.

No longer will a student be married to only one delivery system … such as print, television, or online. Multiple talents are required to navigate cross-currents of existing media and to be able to eventually use delivery systems not yet created.

Bob Benz, former vice president of interactive at the E. W. Scripps Company and now with Radiant Markets, gave a lecture recently to one of our online classes titled “How I learned to stop worrying and love disruption.” He compared the limited number of possible media jobs available when he entered the job market in 1984 to the abundance of new media jobs exploding in the market today.

He advised students to be strong in fundamentals and core skills, know online techniques and multi-platform information delivery systems, and most importantly to “be entrepreneurial in your approach to creating content and thinking about how you’ll pay the rent.”

He stressed that in the old model students sought jobs with large media companies. Now, he insists that a student must “think like an entrepreneur.”

And, frankly, that pioneering entrepreneurial spirit is what is driving many of our students to see journalism as a vibrant and exciting field of study.

Today prognosticators abound, describing what will happen next…what new, mobile, fast and thorough delivery system will capture our journalistic attention and creativity.

According to scholars who study the media industry, we will be seeking new funding models to keep the spigots of information open and liberally flowing with news, investigative pieces and multi-media ways of telling interesting and captivating stories.

New partnerships will be created by former competitors. Television stations will partner with newspapers and magazines and vice versa. These partnerships will create economy of scale but also unlimited possibilities for story-telling and news delivery.

The funding mechanism will change and the media structures most assuredly will be different but the underlying premises of good journalism will remain.

A student will need to learn solid journalistic fundamentals, learn the ethical constructs within which we operate, and then explore the myriad of delivery system options on the horizon. If students do those things, I am confident about their employability and I know they will have a great sense of career satisfaction for the remainder of their long careers.

The future of journalism is bright. Welcome aboard.

Alumni from across the country make the trek back to campus to rekindle their love for the institution and to once again remember what it was like to be a student here. It is a special time for them to visit and for us to welcome them.

I am blessed. As an alumnus of this school and as director, I get to have those special “coming home” feelings almost every day as I arrive on campus. Although my role is different from my student days, I always feel that same mixture of pride and excitement about being on here and being around our energetic journalism faculty and our bright, ambitious students.

We, as a school, also are honored to have extremely loyal and active alumni. Our graduates span the globe and work in every form of media. They are varied in age, gender and ethnicity. They work for major media and small town papers and stations, from large corporate public relations firms and mega advertising agencies to local non-profit and charitable organizations.

Their professional accomplishments are numerous. To date, we have had double-digit Pulitzer Prize winners, nationally syndicated columnists, top-flight sports journalists, and, daily, our graduates are covering politics and governmental leaders on a global basis. In almost every major media market, one will find Ohio University journalism graduates.

We are proud of our alumni and we know they are proud of the education they received here at the JSchool.

Although it is always nice to see our alumni and friends back for Homecoming, we would like to have more of an ongoing relationship with our graduates. And, there are many ways that can happen, financial and otherwise.

We always welcome monetary gifts to help along today’s students and to support scholarships and internships. You may send a check, directed to my attention, to the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism, Scripps Hall, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701.

But, giving back is more than writing a check. We value our alumni’s experience and expertise. We also urge alumni to contact the school and arrange to visit campus, lecture to our classes, meet with our students informally and consult with our faculty.

We also seek alumni ideas and feedback. Over the next year, we are undergoing a total revamping of our curriculum. Therefore, we need to hear from any interested graduate. What courses or experiences were most valuable professionally or what should be added to or eliminated from our undergraduate curriculum?

To make sure we are the best journalism school possible, we need alumni contributions in many forms. We invite everyone to participate in the way that best fits individual situations but please, participate. We want our alumni to remain a vital part of our extended family.

Call me at 740-593-2550 with an idea or suggestion or email comments to me at hodson@ohio.edu. I welcome hearing from all of our alumni.

Change must be embraced.

Some may argue change is a “concept.” Others may say it’s a “process.” But, either way — it is inevitable and inescapable and we, as journalists, must grab it, hold it, adopt it, and make it our friend.

The landscape and the environment in which we work are changing dramatically and inalterably at lightning speed. New information-delivery systems and creative high-tech story-telling methods are available to us as never before. They change almost monthly.

That rapid-fire change creates challenges for journalism education as we have never experienced. For more than 50 years, we were able to teach journalism about the same way, year-after-year, with minor updates and tweaks. We taught students how to work for newspapers, magazines, television and radio news, public relations and advertising management, each as separate and distinct disciplines resting under the umbrella we called “journalism.”

Individual faculty members were required to understand and teach within just one or two of those disciplines, and each student could specialize in a particular sequence with the knowledge that jobs were available and he or she would not be required to shift from one medium to another.

Well — that concept no longer applies. Forget about it. And don’t spend too much time pining for the “good old days.” We are in the midst of a new day and a most exciting time.

Yet, many of our alumni I talk with are decrying the death of “journalism as we knew it.” I suggest that journalism is not dying. It is changing dramatically, and that’s exciting.

Large newspapers may be struggling, but small papers and the alternative press are flourishing, and both are embracing new technology to augment and enhance their traditional ink-on-paper products. Local television stations, as well as the major networks, are quickly adapting to the online world. Public relations practitioners must be adept at all information delivery systems and advertising management people must have a command of exploding new markets and how to reach them. Today, “print” people are toting video cameras and microphones, and “broadcast” folk are posting long articles and still photos to the Web before putting together their packages for the airwaves.

This is an exhilarating time for journalism, and our students know it. While some social observers are trying to bury journalism and turn the world over to bloggers and self-appointed Internet pundits, our enrollments continue to rise. Many people still want to be “trained” as journalists, and they want to get that training at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism.

This year, we had 941 undergraduate students and the largest first-year class in school history. Our first-year numbers were 48.4 percent higher than in 2002 and 33 percent greater than in 2003. We expect to hit our goal of 1,000 undergraduates next fall. And our students stay with us. Our retention rate from first to second-year is 90 percent ??” well above university-wide numbers.

So while some are digging journalism’s grave, our students are flocking to be the new breed of journalist ??” pioneers on a new frontier. As educators, the faculty is now presented with tremendous challenges and opportunities. While staying true to the deeply rooted fundamentals of journalism ??” proper language, accuracy in reporting, and a deep respect for truth and high ethical standards ??” we are encouraging students to break out of their traditional sequences and to try journalism from multiple platforms and multiple dimensions.

We, as a faculty, are embracing those changes. We’ve added new faculty members who come to us with strong multi-platform experience, and many of our current faculty members are broadening their own skills to take back to the classroom. We’re exploring ways to open our established sequences — making it easier for our students to maneuver through a wide-variety of course offerings.

We’re reaching out and becoming more interdisciplinary and forging even more partnerships with our colleagues in the schools of Visual Communication and Media Arts and Studies (formerly School of Telecommunications).

In short, we are reinventing ourselves to give wings to our faculty and students so they can fly to new heights of innovation, flexibility, and accomplishment.

And, we would love to have the help of our able alumni ??” you. If you have suggestions to help us traverse this new landscape, please contact me at 740-593-2550 or hodson@ohio.edu.

Join us in forging the future.

Opportunities abound for first-year students at the E. W. Scripps School to get involved in co-curricular and extra-curricular journalistic activities in all media about all subjects.

This year, it is certainly true of students who are interested in sports journalism. I can personally tell you about three first-year students who have excelled during their first two academic quarters.

Caleb Troop traveled to us from St. Louis. While in high school, he had his own sports Web site and reported on sports for various high schools around his home area.

Before coming to campus this past fall, Caleb laid groundwork to launch his professional career in the Athens area. He secured a once-a-week sports column position for the twice-a-week newspaper, The Athens News. He started his column during his first week on campus.

I came to college with a strong amount of experience, in high school, so I felt that the sky was the limit if I worked hard. That said, not once did I think I would be involved to the extent that I am currently. While I have been fortunate with the connections I have made, without a doubt the school and the city that surrounds it allows for boundless opportunities. — Caleb Troop [read full interview]

He also started a sports blog (troopsports.com), quickly building the reputation of breaking big sports stories before other local media. He became an authority on football recruits and is often quoted in various media outlets for his accurate and breaking stories.

During his first academic quarter, Troop also began doing play-by-play of high school football games on 970 WATH radio, a local commercial station (also available at 970wath.com). This continued throughout basketball season as Troop became the play-by-play voice of Athens High School sports.

Additionally, Troop and a fourth-year student Jimmy Smith began to do pre-game shows on WATH and WXTQ radio for all Ohio University home football games and all Ohio University Mid-American Conference home basketball games.

In January, Troop and Smith began a one-hour five-night-a-week telephone sports call-in show on WATH radio called The Sportsfan. (also available at thesportsfan.mypodcast.com). They’ve interviewed top local, regional and national sports figures and broadcasters, broken several top university sports stories and lead the way in high quality local sports reporting.

Troop was not yet finished. During Winter Quarter at Ohio University, he produced about 30 three-minute audio interview packages for the pre-game shows for Ohio University Women’s Basketball. He did color analysis for two women’s games and as a first-year student, he actually called the play-by-play of Division I women’s basketball,” doing the Ohio v. Bowling Green game in February for the Ohio Bobcats Sports Network.

This Spring Quarter Troop will be sharing the broadcast booth with Smith to call Ohio University Division I baseball games. Remember, Troop has been at Ohio University all of two academic quarters.

Brian Boesch, a journalism major and an Honors Tutorial College student from Medina, Ohio, also is making a name for himself in sports journalism. As a first-year student, he emerged as the chief color analyst for Ohio University Women’s basketball during Winter Quarter. He also is blogging for Bobcatblogs.net, a new sports blog he helped found to cover Ohio University sports.

Before coming to Ohio University and to Scripps, I had very little journalism experience. I had been the sports editor of my school newspaper and had covered my high school’s football team, but these jobs did not offer much preparation. Despite my lack of experience, I jumped right in at WOUB. By the end of fall quarter, I was covering a few games around the Athens area. Once winter quarter began, I was cleared for morning radio, and I was continuing to report some games. — Brian Boesch [read full interview]

Boesch also is traveling with the Ohio University baseball team this Spring Quarter and is broadcasting the team’s away league games in the Mid-American Conference. That’s right. A first-year student is doing play-by-play broadcasting of Division I college baseball.

This diligent work also has landed Boesch an internship this summer as media coordinator for the Southern Ohio Copperheads baseball team. This team is part of the wooden-bat Great Lake Summer League sponsored by Major League Baseball.

Boesch will be in charge of the team’s entire media operations and he also will be broadcasting all of the team’s away games via the Internet.

Boesch has accomplished all of this plus he has worked for WOUB Sports on radio and he maintains a stellar academic record.

Finally, Allie LaForce, from Vermillion, Ohio, has lived both sports and sports broadcasting during her first-year. LaForce is a journalism major recently admitted to the Honors Tutorial College based upon her outstanding academic performance while in the Scripps School.

LaForce, the 2005 Miss Teenage America, has spent time in front of the camera because of her former crown and also has earned her way as a sports reporter and correspondent for Sports Zone, a student broadcast vehicle on campus. LaForce also has trained as a reporter for WOUB and had the early morning sports shift at the radio station during winter break.

On a ten point scale, ten being the best, I would rate my opportunities as a ten. Professors, students, and alumni have done a wonderful job informing me of all of the opportunities that Scripps has to offer. On top of that, I have been embraced by each local media organization to become an active participant. — Allie LaForce [read full interview]

LaForce not only reported about sports during her first-year but has participated as well. During Fall Quarter, she was informed that she made the Ohio University women’s basketball team as a walk-on. She practiced all season with the Bobcats and was with the team for all 33 games from November through the first part of March.

Now that the season is over, LaForce will head back to the broadcast booth in earnest to hone her broadcasting skills.

Although we have highlighted these three students as examples of what can be done by first-year students, they are not the only students who are producing top-flight journalistic products. There are many first-year students working at The Post, WOUB Radio and Television, speakeasymag.com, poisefashion.com, and Backdrop Magazine.

We invite all potential students to explore the journalistic experiences that can be garnered quickly here at the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism. The results will amaze you.

That constant ethical introspection is one of the major distinctions separating us from the myriad of bloggers and self-appointed journalists who flood our information highways.

I’m not saying that citizen journalists by definition are unethical — some are and some are not. I’m also not saying that all mainstream journalists are ethical, because we know that’s not always true, either.

But mostly, outside of our established newsrooms, there are no ethical checks and balances — no ethical safety nets — to protect the news consumer or targets of unethical practices.

In these shifting sands of ethics in mainstream and alternative media, we believe that the journalism school has an expansive role that we take seriously.

Our mission is three-fold. First, we educate our students about ethics. Second, we conduct scholarly research in the field of ethics. And, third, we talk about ethics to the professions, to citizen journalists, and to bloggers.

Obviously, we have an obligation to teach students the sound ethical principles that will serve them well throughout their careers. Each student receives multiple doses of ethics while at Scripps. Ethics, for us, is a separate course from Media Law and it is a core course taken by all of our students, regardless of sequence. Additionally, ethics discussions are woven into many of our courses in all of our sequences.

That is exactly the kind of ethics education that Jerry Ceppos, former vice president for news at Knight Ridder and former president of the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, called for in an interview published on March 26 on Poynter’s Web site.

“I’d require that every journalism graduate take a significant ethics course. I might even offer a separate class on fairness and accuracy that is distinct from the ethics offering,” Ceppos said.

Beyond our required ethics course, Assoc. Prof. Bernhard Debatin has created two new courses: One is a graduate seminar about ethics and the Internet and a second is an undergraduate course about ethical issues confronting the media in regard to race and gender.

Journalism ethics at the Scripps School is not just a classroom exercise. A number of our professors are conducting research in ethics, from the coverage of terrorism to the challenges of online journalism, from ethical issues relating to letters to the editor to the ethics of covering the private lives of public officials.

Our focus on ethics, however, has not been limited to just the mainstream media. As a school, we are trying to reach out to alternative media to help instill ethical standards there as well. For example, in April, we co-sponsored a national symposium on ethical issues of online journalism from the perspective of traditional news media, citizen journalists, and bloggers. This summer, we started a project to train citizens in a nearby rural community to create their own news media with a focus on professional ethics.

It is our unwavering belief that the foundation of good journalism is a solid understanding of and adherence to strong ethical standards. We are in the vanguard of journalism ethics education, but there is much more to do. We need to constantly explore and study ethical dilemmas while we educate our students, professionals, and citizens. That is a core mission of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism.