Visiting prof heads back to newspapers, Europe

It seemed like any other late-night smoke, but as Visiting Professor Henriette Lowisch sat on the front porch of her Lower-Rattlesnake home and watched a black bear amble through her neighbor’s garden, she knew she wasn’t in the big city anymore.

Montana is just another stop in the frenzied, nomadic life of the German journalist who has lived extensively on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Berlin editor for the world’s international wire service — Agence France-Presse — Lowisch splits her time between the German capital and Washington, D.C., where she has reported on American government, the European Union and NATO.

Lowisch came to UM to teach in the School of Journalism as the 2006 T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor, a professorship created in honor of a deceased journalism student that brings world-class media professionals to the school for one semester each year.

Though no stranger to America, or to being in front of a class, UM provided Lowisch with her first chance to teach in the American style.

“Teaching in Europe has more of a workshop character,” she said. “There are lots of professionals and
continuing education classes.”

But here Lowisch taught a class of primarily journalism seniors about foreign corresponding and acted as an adviser to the Montana Kaimin, a duty stipulated by the Pollner family in honor of their son’s love for the student paper.

As an outsider coming in to advise a group of student journalists running an independent paper, Lowisch said she wasn’t sure what to expect when she walked in to the ramshackle office, but it all came together on election night in the wee hours of the morning.

“For the last 10 years I have, in some capacity, covered the U.S. general elections, and for the first time I didn’t have a job,” she said.

But to a group of college kids who had never covered such an event before, she could provide direction and advice as the night wore on with many races still not decided.

“It was the perfect fusion of what I could give them and what they have,” she said.

While here, Lowisch spoke on the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world and said she was surprised at the variety of feedback she received.

“People responded well,” she said. “Because someone came who was willing to talk about the relationship with respect.”

But something that struck Lowisch as odd was the perception of Americans that Europeans have new ideas and some of the answers.

“The United States is the producer of ideas,” she said. “The U.S. is still the steamroller for modernity.”