Well, it’s official. I donned the cap and gown today and walked the path of a newly minted Missouri School of Journalism Ph.D. After two ceremonies, a trip to the mall and a spin on the carousel with the kids, a fancy dinner, and way too much frozen custard at Culver’s, I’m ready for bed. Despite a few hiccups, I’m glad I took the opportunity to participate in official graduation ceremonies at Missouri. It served as a fitting culmination to the time I spent and the things I learned.
I even picked some inspiration from the J School graduation speaker, Sallie Gaines. In an effort to imprint both her words and the ceremonies on my brain, I’d like to share a few tonight. I’ve paraphrased most of the quotes, and I hope I do them justice.
It is up to those of us graduating journalism school now, Gaines, senior vice president of Hill and Knowlton, said to determine the industry’s future. In this case, wisdom does not come from age and experience. As an example she asked the audience if we should trust those people who couldn’t figure out how to program their VCR to determine how journalism should adapt to new technology.
But technology shouldn’t be all we focus on. In fact, we focus on it too much. The inventors are rarely those who capitalize on technology. Every time you hear about a great new Web idea that has a lot of buzz, but hasn’t made any money, you can’t call that a success.
Instead, today’s graduates need to apply the lessons of journalism to make the most out of technology. Now more than ever, they need to be able to tell a good story. They must know what questions to ask to get at the truth and who to ask them to. Gaines said a friend told her that he saw tons and tons of resumes where people had great technical skills, but didn’t know the basics of good writing and journalism.
The biggest advantage of a journalism school eduction is that foundation that can be applied to so many different media. Gaines herself started as a reporter, but now works in public relations. Both jobs, however, rely on the same skill set that she could have obtained only in journalism school.
Sallie, I’m sure I haven’t given your words justice. For that I apologize. But I wanted to make sure I posted at least some of the messages because you got me fired up. You made an impact on a lot of us who attended the ceremony, and not just the graduates. Your speech was one of the main topics of conversation among my family afterwards. My father-in-law said it best: Graduates today are perfectly positioned to make a difference. Now it’s just up to us to do it.
P.S. Thanks to my good friend Jonathan Groves for the picture. I can use it tonight because he smartly posted it right to Facebook from his phone.
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Just wanted to say how proud I am of my graduate. At one point in the ceremony I thought he and I were the only ones who really understood the work he did, but then just as I had resigned to that thought, our sleepy 7 year old heard his father being called out across the stage and perked up enough to say, “GO DAD!”. I realized then that although Hans did all the hard work, he was not alone. He had a grateful family right beside him the whole way loving him more every semester for all the work and effort. Congratulations Dad, you are a Dr. now but the title we cherish most will always be Dad.
Congratulations Dr. Hans! You and your family are so, so wonderful.