J-School News
| School of Journalism | The University of Montana |
October 2000
Tattered Tents to Digital Daze: Alums return to J-School
A man clutched his coffee cup and pointed to the Newsweek cover featuring the Unabomber – a photo taken by University of Montana journalism students. Nearby a woman was reading the Kaimin front page that announced "Kennedy Assassinated." Down the hall, a couple smiled as they peered closely at the 1923 Style Book and a clip that showed Montana journalism students meeting in tents before the building existed.
On homecoming weekend the UM School of Journalism halls were filled with more than 100 former students and faculty who came home to share their stories and memories.
Alumni attended an open
house at the journalism school, viewed drawings for the new journalism building
(see related story), and 190 alumni and friends assembled at the Friday reception
at the Holiday 
Inn
Parkside for drinks and conversation. On Saturday many witnessed the Montana
Grizzlies pull out a last minute 24-20 victory over Sacramento State. Then,
approximately 170 alumni and friends gathered for a reception and dinner at
the Doubletree Hotel. After dinner, the crowd enjoyed presentations and comments
by three former deans and current dean Jerry Brown.
The J-School Reunion 2000 was the first ever all-class reunion. Alumni from 1941 to 2000 attended. During the open house festivities, alumni laughed, hugged and ate cookies in the A.B. Guthrie Memorial Reading Room.
"I'm glad to see this first reunion – I didn't know if I'd make it," said Scotty Campbell, a 1941 graduate who served in World War II before working as a journalist in Chicago and Butte.
Brown took credit for the clear, warm weather as he welcomed the alumni and guests. "The tradition you encountered is alive and well," Brown said. He introduced the present faculty – whom he said have a combined 200 years of journalistic experience – as a group that continues to help students "hit the ground running." He then lauded the present students, saying they were as irreverent, disrespectful of authority, vain and nosy as the gathered alumni were before them. The crowd cheered.
Later, the alumni converged on the steps of the journalism building for a traditional group photo. At the front of the crowd stood former dean Nathaniel Blumberg, holding a banner and flanked by fellow emeritus faculty Ed Dugan and Bob McGiffert. "It's indescribable in that I still see the faces of the students in the returning graduates," Blumberg said. "I have such affection for the halcyon days of yore."
Donna Wilson Ferdinand from the class of 1964 said that upon graduation there was a feeling among the students that they could do anything, and she stressed it was great to see Blumberg, the school's dean from 1956 to 1968. "He's my dean," she said.
Suzanne Lintz Ives, who graduated in 1963, also has affection for Blumberg and the school. She described an incident when she and 12 other classmates were nearing graduation. Blumberg was speaking to the group and suddenly started singing "Hey, Look Me Over" by Cy Coleman.
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Emeritus faculty Ed Dugan, Nathaniel Blumberg and Bob McGiffert join Dean Jerry Brown outside the School of Journalism's building. |
Blumberg's rendition of the rousing number had the whole room crying, Ives said, but also gave her such a boost that she was able to take on the world with confidence.
Gary Sorensen, the 1957 graduate who organized the reunion and chaired the reunion committee, said the weekend's events surpassed expectations. "It went better than we even thought it would," he said. "I don't know of anyone who didn't have fun."
Sorensen said many alumni came back to show their appreciation for Dugan, McGiffert and Blumberg. The dinner Saturday was a "fun evening of reminiscences that showed the spirit that students still have for the school," Sorensen said. Dugan, Blumberg and McGiffert all spoke, and McGiffert donned goggles and an aviator hat as he had during his teaching days to sing about Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight. Take your hats off, he sang, "to plucky, lucky Lindbergh! The eagle of the U-S-A!"
"The banquet Saturday was a newsworthy display of the people and the traditions that have made this school strong," Brown said. "To see the giants of this school – among them Blumberg, Dugan, McGiffert – and many current faculty interacting with their successful former students was an uplifting experience for everyone."
Quest for new journalism building begins
Reprinted from the Montana Kaimin, Sept. 29, 2000
By Damian Ingleby
The preliminary groundwork has been laid for a new journalism building. Now all administrators need is the money to build it.
Jerry Brown, dean of the School of Journalism, said construction of the planned building will depend on private donations. No state support is expected. Therefore, fund raising is required to make the project happen.
The estimated price is $12 million. Brown said he doesn't know how long it will take to raise the money.
As a result, architects offered rough plans for Brown to show alumni during the journalism school's homecoming reunion.
According to Mark Headley of Overland Partners Inc., the principal architect for the project, the most important feature of the new building is that it will unify the print and Radio-Television programs under one roof, which are currently housed on opposite sides of the campus. Other factors considered in the design include the expansion of classroom size and granting additional space for the Montana Kaimin. Plans call for the new building to be located by Jeannette Rankin Hall and the Social Sciences building Ground-breaking for construction of the new building will only begin when the school raises the necessary $12 million, Brown said.
Professor Carol Van Valkenburg said enrollment in journalism has skyrocketed, rising 30 percent last year alone. If growth continues, she said, the school will run out of room.
(Editor's Note: The drawings of the proposed building are scheduled to be available on the Internet later this year. Pay attention to this page for the hyperlink that will connect you to the site.)
L.A. Times film critic tells students how to win his job
How does one get to be a famous film critic?
By hanging around a long time and getting lucky.
That's what happened to make Kenneth Turan a Los Angeles Times film critic after he waited more than two decades to review movies. "I was literally the right person at the right time," he said.
A crowd of about 30 gathered
in the School of Journalism's A.B. Guthrie Reading Room last month to glean
wisdom from the critic, who discussed his job, journalism and Hollywood. Turan
is a Brooklyn 
native
whose career has included nine years at the Washington Post, free-lance magazine
work, National Public Radio and CBS Radio film commentary, and nine years as
film critic for the Los Angeles Times. He also periodically teaches a film reviewing
class at both the University of California at Berkeley and the University of
Southern California.
There is no one way to get a job as a film critic, Turan said, because so much depends on "happenstance, coincidence and luck." He worked for decades as a journalist before he landed the Los Angeles Times spot, and he said there are many writers who are as qualified as he is to do the job, he said. So he made a practical suggestion to students searching for a similarly plum position.
"Become friends with editors who can hire you," he said.
In the 1960s, Turan said, he had originally planned to go to graduate school in history, but chose journalism instead. "I never thought of it as a career," he said. "I had a hard time with journalism school." After taking a film reviewing class in 1968 taught by Judith Crist, a respected critic with the New York Herald Tribune, Turan decided film criticism was what he really wanted to do. But he would have to wait until the early 1990s to land the coveted Los Angeles Times job.
The early years of his career at the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal remain his most exciting experiences in journalism, Turan said, even though he wasn't directly involved in the coverage. He also said he found later success in freelance magazine work by simply convincing editors that whatever his subject "there was a story there."
Turan stressed that the quality of writing is what keeps people reading. He said that people are busy, and "we are all looking for excuses to stop reading" the newspaper. The job of journalists, he said, is to make it impossible for readers to stop - to compel them to finish an article or review.
But writing compelling reviews three-to-five times a week can be a chore, Turan said, especially when so many films are bad. And the time-consuming task of scheduling when to see the films, which he said takes almost as long as actually watching the films, takes a toll on creativity.
The challenge when writing about good films, he said, is to avoid the cliches – "great, wonderful, fabulous" – and be original. "Reviews are hard on writing," he said; trying to avoid the overused words is one reason why. Bad films are easier to review, he said, because he can be more inventive and ironic in his writing. Readers respond more often to those reviews, he said, because the criticism is often funnier.
Turan said he remains objective in his reviewing by taking films one at a time and judging each one on its own terms. If the film is a comedy, he wants to be laughing; if it's a thriller, he wants to be excited. Even though seeing women tortured on film is not entertaining to him, such as in the recently-released "The Cell," he believes that a good film can have violence in it. He said he has to see each movie first and then he can form his opinion.
"I try to let the film be itself," he said.
Critiquing a film is personal for Turan, and he said he takes his responsibility as an "audience surrogate" seriously. He said he trusts his own reactions and feelings and doesn't let the pressure of being in an "Industry town" such as Hollywood color his opinions on movies.
"God doesn't tell me what a good film is," he said.
Jason Begay, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation and a journalism student at UM, recently was awarded one of ten $10,000 scholarships by the Scripps Howard Foundation. Begay has reported for the Montana Kaimin and The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune. This summer he completed an internship at the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Judith G. Clabes, president and CEO of the foundation, said in a press release that "(t)he foundation's Top Ten Scholarship program was created to identify and reward the brightest college journalism students in the country and the 10 outstanding scholars selected this year certainly fit that bill." . . . Dean Jerry Brown and Radio-TV assistant professors Denise Dowling and Ray Ekness attended the Associated Press Broadcasters Association meeting in Helena September 30. CBS News correspondent John Blackstone spoke on network news coverage of Montana's forest fire season. Montana television and radio news directors Jim Harmon of KECI-TV in Missoula, Blair Martin of KULR-TV in Billings and Steve Fullerton of KLYQ-AM in Hamilton reviewed local coverage of the fires in a roundtable discussion lead by Ian Marquand of KPAX-TV. A representative of Project Vote Smart spoke on how stations can use candidate information as part of their election coverage. The annual AP Durso Awards for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, named in honor of Joe Durso, Jr., former acting dean in the School of Journalism, were also awarded during the meeting.
J-School News
| School of Journalism | The University of Montana |
October 2000
Editor: Michael Downs, visiting assistant professor
Reporter: Tracy K. Whitehair
Reunion photos: John Hafner
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