But as a liberal arts college, we can give you something else. We'll show you how to adapt.
At left, exercising a newswriting skill (taking notes) at memorial to Irish labor leader James Connolly in Dublin, May 2010. Tour was sponsored by BenU-Springfield
Liberal arts? How does that help you adapt? Well, here's how it worked for me. The same month I got my Ph.D. in English literature, I was out in the "real world." Covering a coal mine strike, to be exact. It was an abrupt transition, from poetry readings and Shakespeare to interviewing courthouse politicians, sheriff's deputies and criminal defense lawyers for a small daily newspaper down South.
But it turned out my liberal arts education was exactly the background I needed. In a word, it taught me to be flexible.
In 15 years of newspapering, I covered the courts, police beat and the "cop shop," state and local government, a U.S. Department of Energy national research lab, nuclear reactor technology, the agricultural implement industry, federal ag policy, economic development, politics and government including two state legislatures, the Iowa presidential caucuses and a Chicago mayor's election (considered by some the highest office in the land). Then I "went over to the dark side," doing media advance and issues research on fiscal policy for an statewide elected official in the Illinois statehouse. Now I edit online publications on software that hadn't even been dreamed of back when I left grad school and started banging out police news on an Underwood manual typewriter.
But every time I've tackled something new, my liberal arts background has given me the flexibility to master it. That kind of flexibility is what I hope to pass on to my students in the news-editorial courses I teach at Benedictine.
-- Pete "Doc" Ellertsen
"What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies and meanness and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as the profession; whether it is a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debase it. When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days."
-- Stanley Walker, city editor, New York Herald Tribune, 1924
