Studs Terkel, May 16, 1912-Oct. 31, 2008 / COMM 337 ASSIGNMENT

The death of Louis "Studs" Terkel, Chicago radio host and author of at least a half dozen highly regarded oral histories, led the Chicago news websites this weekend. His primary medium was radio, but he was a fixture on the city's literary and music scenes, especially jazz and gospel, and he fought for equal rights. The coverage of his death is worth reading, not only for their insights into how a skilled interviewer and journalist went about his business but also because some of them are unusually well written themselves.

Your assignment: Follow the links below, and read up on Studs Terkel. Look especially for: (1) quotes from Terkel offering insights you can use in your own writing and/or interview techniques; (2) other wisdom of Terkel's you can use in your career; (3) tricks or techniques in the obits you can copy: and (4) anything else that strikes your fancy. Post your reactions to your blog: What did you learn that you can use from reading about him?

Studs Terkel did so many things, and he did so many of them so well, I'd encourage each of you will find a different focus as you read. (Example: I'm especially interested in his friendship with gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and other musicians, since Terkel almost single-handedly brought black gospel music as it was performed on the highly segregated South Side of Chicago to white audiences, but that's only a small part of what Terkel did over the years.) With the links below, I've tried to pull out quotes from different writers that try to give a balanced, overall assessment of the guy. As you read the stories I've linked to, I think you'll find a lot more than that. So follow your own interests.

First we'll listen to a little bit of Terkel and -- if the link is still active -- watch a 2:44min. video clip. National Public Radio has a an obit and sound clips including two-minute clips "On Finding Stories And Storytellers" and " On 'Journalism Against the Grain." And The Chicago Tribune has several videos linked to the front page of its website (or did over the weekend -- we'll have to see if they still work by class time Monday). But mostly, we'll read about Terkel.

Terkel's obituary on the Chicago Sun-Times' website Friday, by columnist Neil Steinberg, tries to sum up his career in the lede:

Studs Terkel turned the voice of average Americans into a font of history.

The Pulitzer-Prize winning author, television pioneer, theatrical actor, long-time radio host, unrepentant leftie and friend of the little man, died peacefully at his home on the North Side of Chicago this afternoon.

He was 96.

"He had a very full, eventful and sometimes tempestuous life ," said his son Dan. "It was very satisfactory"

Studs — calling him "Mr. Terkel" always seemed overly formal — was a character. He liked to wear a red-checked shirt, a rumpled suit and had a stogie jammed in the side of his thick-lipped mouth. He enjoyed a martini well into his 90s.

Though his dozen books were national best-sellers — Division Street America, and Working and The Good War — Studs was best known to many Chicagoans as an interviewer who hosted a talk show on radio station WFMT from 1952 to 1997.

Steinberg comes close, but Studs Terkel did so many things, and did them so well, you can't really sum up his career in a few grafs.

At the end of Friday's obituary in the Chicago Tribune, Rick Kogan also comes close:

... he said with zest that when he "checked out"--as a "hotel kid" he rarely used the word "dying," preferring the euphemism "checking out" and its variants--he wanted to be cremated. He wanted his ashes mixed with those of his wife, which sat in an urn in the living room of his house, near the bed in which he slept and dreamed.

"My epitaph? My epitaph will be, 'Curiosity did not kill this cat,'." he said.

He then said that he wanted his and Ida's ashes to be scattered in Bughouse Square, that patch of green park that so informed his first years in his adopted city.

"Scatter us there," he said, a gleeful grin on his face. "It's against the law. Let 'em sue us."

Terkel is survived by his son. A memorial service is planned.

An appreciation by Patrick Reardon, senior reporter for the Trib:

It would be wrong to say Terkel was colorblind. He was deeply curious, deeply intrigued, about all the colors of the rainbow, whether in skin tones or political stripes or philosophical shadings. His only bias was on behalf of the powerless, the oppressed and the unheard.

And those on the margins responded in kind.

Also in the Trib, metro lifestyle columnist Mary Schmich notes some irony: "I'm told that Studs' absentee ballot arrived in the mail the same day he died, and he didn't get to vote. But his work, his hope, are among the reasons that 96 years after he was born it's possible that by Wednesday we'll have elected our first black president."

One of the best is in the lede to Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert's reminiscence. He says:

So there wasn't a World Series in Chicago, and Studs missed the 2008 Presidential election. Other than that, Louis (Studs) Terkel did everything possible in 96 years.

Was he the greatest Chicagoan? I cannot think of another. For me, he represented the joyous, scrappy, liberal, generous, wise-cracking heart of this city. If you met him, he was your friend. That happened to the hundreds and hundreds of people he interviewed for his radio show and 20 best-selling books. He wrote down the oral histories of those of his time who did not have a voice. In conversation he could draw up every single one of their names.

Ebert also links to a birthday tribute in May headlined "How Studs helps me lead my life."

By Saturday, editorials were going up on the Web. The Trib's was headlined simply "Studs" ... it ended with something I never would have expected. But maybe it summed him up best of all:

It is inconceivable that such a long and creative life would have passed without someone asking Terkel the signature question of all ages, "What is your work all about?"

That happened a few years ago. Terkel's answer was simple, revealing, profound. All those books, he said, were about redemption.

"Anybody can be redeemed," he said.

"I've seen it."