Radio to TV. Weekly newspapers to dailies. Magazines to wire services.
My news career has been fun. I’ve fought with police over the right to see search warrants. Drove through the Mojave Desert to watch a Space Shuttle landing. Made my first trip into China for a multi-city, 3-week reporting stint not speaking a word of Mandarin as a young American woman traveling alone. And broke my fair share of news competing against worthy journo opponents.
I began my journalism career at age 19 at the University of New Mexico in the days when it had a Journalism Department. I became hooked on journalism when I took my first news writing class. I was so enthusiastic that I wrote news articles for extra credit by interviewing local officials, such as city firemen, to gain real-world experience in journalism. I wanted to be a TV reporter but the university only offered a program for print news. So, my formal education was as a print journalist with photojournalism courses. However I worked hard independently, gaining internships in broadcast news to learn the business by actually doing it as an unpaid volunteer.
The journalism school was very proud of its hometown hero, World War II war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who chose Albuquerque as the place to build his dream home in 1940. Pyle lived in his beloved house located only one mile away from the Journalism Department at UNM. In keeping with the standards of Pulitzer-Prize-winning Pyle, the UNM Journalism School hired notable faculty who formed me as a journalist. My two most influential professors were news veterans.
• Margaret Hyman—a former UPI Bureau Chief in Puerto Rico. She obtained a rare interview with Nathan Leopold a year before he died. Leopold and his pal Richard Loeb together committed a nationally sensational crime in 1924 when they murdered a boy in an experiment. Alfred Hitchcock made a movie based on the Leopold and Loeb crime. A tiny woman who dressed with feminine flair, Professor Hyman had a fiery personality. She was one of the few women in journalism who at that time (or since then) wasn’t competitive with me or fellow women journalists. Instead she was a mentor, encouraging me to have high standards in my news reporting and be the best I could be (and be myself rather than someone else).
• Stuart Novins—a CBS news legend, who joined CBS Radio during World War II as a reporter in Europe with buddies Edward R. Murrow and Eric Sevareid. Novins was one of three journalists on the panel during the 1960 presidential debate between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy. He became the 2nd moderator for “Face the Nation.” A former Moscow bureau chief from 1962–1965, he was one of three journalists to conduct a ground-breaking interview with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Novins had a great impact on my way of thinking and the journalist I became. Although also a friend of Walter Cronkite, he spoke to us mostly about Murrow and following in his footsteps. He told us we had a duty as journalists. We had to get it right or get out. We had to be objective or get out. We had to evaluate the information we received in our interviews/reporting with personal responsibility for its publication or dissemination on the airwaves. We couldn’t just say something because someone told it to us. That was wrong. We had to take a hard look at what we were told and who told it to us. We had to evaluate the credibility of our information and its newsworthiness.
“A free people, in order to remain free, must know,” he declared. It was either straight, hard news or an opinion piece. We were to be objective. If we had an opinion, we were to keep it to ourselves. He told us we had to be prepared to make personal sacrifices as journalists. Never register under any political party. (How could we ever cover politics with any semblance of impartiality if we were registered to vote under a political party or if we gave money to any organization or cause?) We were instructed to register to vote as “undeclared.” He told us never to be intimidated when interviewing anyone no matter how high a person’s status or rank. All people are only human. I followed his inspiring advice.
When I look at the mandate in today’s news organizations and their mandates for website clicks and desires for their reporters to be more social media personalities, I wonder what Novins and Murrow would think. How does what we see cloaked as “news” by “journalists” jive with his mandate that a journalist should strive to be objective, not blur facts with opinions, and maintain the impartial integrity of the noble profession of journalism?
In my junior year, I transferred to San Francisco State University’s journalism program, which also had notable journalism professors there. But none had the same impact on me as Novins and Hyman. The training I had in both J-schools isn’t really done today. There is a greater current emphasis on technology, multimedia, digital reporting and communications. Often communications programs are blended with journalism.
In mid-career, I decided to get a Master’s in Journalism. My choice was the one of the oldest formal journalism schools in the world—the Missouri School of Journalism, founded in 1908, at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Many notable journalists have been educated there. I enjoyed my studies and the camaraderie among fellow journos.
I once encountered a first-class buffoon masquerading as a “journalist” who assured me there was no such thing as the profession of journalism—no doubt to cover up a lack of education/training that comes with attending journalism schools and working under good editors. Lots of essayists and other writers lacking journalism fundamentals parachute into news positions via “who-you-know” or having an Ivy League education in other fields. (Particularly true in DC and among foreign correspondents who become journalists mainly because of fluency in a language.) Many people can cook, but is that the same as being a chef? No, it is not.
I think the journalism profession would improve through better education and training of journalists who keep their opinions private unless they’re public commentators or writing editorials or analysis. You can’t have it both ways. I’ve often heard, no one’s unbiased. (So why try?) Well, you can be fair to different viewpoints even if you don’t personally agree. “The people’s right to know” should outweigh other interests.
In 2021, I was honored to win a 1st place award for my autobiography “My Time in Another World: Experiences as a Foreign Correspondent in China” from the National Federation of Press Women. (It meant a lot to me to be acknowledged by my peers.)