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The News Record office has moved around to at least five different locations since the '70s, but in 2004, staff members moved into quarters especially designed for them in Swift Hall, complete with wireless Internet access. Staff members in the spring of 2006 include, from left to right, photo editor Dan Burns, editor-in-chief Julie Hollyday, managing editor Michael Rovito and entertainment editor Laura Sayer. photo/Andrew Higley |
Scooping the downtown dailies with an "extra" edition of the student newspaper was a dream come true for editor Mary Linn DeBeck in 1944.
While she was still feeling pretty impressed at the way she and her staff had stayed up all night to interview, write and produce an issue in less than 12 hours, a uniformed man holding a whip walked in, daring her to come out from behind her desk. Relying on sound journalistic intuition, the bleary-eyed editor declined.
Learning to deal with angry readers has been part of the experience for student reporters and editors at the University of Cincinnati for 125 years, beginning with the Belatrasco newspaper in 1880. (It became the News Record in 1936.) Working on the paper has trained students to report the news, take photographs, sell advertising, handle circulation and produce a professional publication.
And even though the university did not have a journalism program until this fall, journalists across the country claim their News Record experiences and related A&S coursework gave them all they needed to launch successful careers.
"The News Record really did lay the groundwork for all the journalism I've done after that," says Glenn Gamboa, A&S '89, a music critic for Newsday whose series on hip-hop music's impact on society made him a Pulitzer Prize finalist last year.
"Because the News Record is such a small operation, you get to do everything -- report, edit, layout, graphic design. We learned the importance of deadlines, getting things right, being accountable for what we wrote and facing our peers or audience when they disagreed.
"If you're wrong, people will tell you you're wrong. They yell all the time. But that's a good thing."
In the spring of '44, however, DeBeck wasn't so sure it was a good thing to have this glaring, whip-wielding soldier explain how she was wrong, but she had cultivated enough insight to understand how his viewpoint differed from hers.
The extra edition had come about after she learned, the evening before, that a federal cut in military funds meant hundreds of soldiers in the Army Specialized Training Program would leave campus immediately. "They were a substantial part of UC's student body," says DeBeck, now Mary Linn White, A&S '44.
Working through the night, the staffers managed to have a one-page extra edition ready by 6 a.m. to distribute across campus and hand-deliver to each serviceman during breakfast. Not everyone in the dining hall shared the staff's excitement.
"President Raymond Waters had told me this cut would be a significant funding loss to the university," White remembers. "To the GI's, the president's comment seemed to indicate that all UC wanted was their tuition."
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Walt Handelsman, A&S '79, the '97 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning, first started poking jabs at the White House as a News Record cartoonist in the '70s. Here, he toys with the Jimmy Carter administration. Handelsman is syndicated to more than 250 newspapers and now works at Newsday -- employer of another News Record alumnus who was a Pulitzer finalist last year, Glenn Gamboa, A&S '89. |
"Gloating" was not only the last thing on her mind, it's the last word News Record alumni would use to describe working on the paper. "Humbling" would be more appropriate. "We work with people who give you constant criticism," says current editor-in-chief Julie Hollyday. "It prepares you to walk into a newsroom."
White agrees. At age 83, she vividly recalls weekly "crits" from faculty adviser Henry Segal. "His theme was accuracy and fair play," she says, "and I took his lectures to heart for life."
They must have served her well. After leaving UC, White had such a prestigious career at the Cincinnati Post that she was inducted into the Cincinnati Journalism Hall of Fame in '95.
"Newspaper work simply was my life," she says. "I loved the pace of the work, the excitement, the challenge. Most, I think, I liked the power of writing, being trusted to analyze a situation and turn it into a story. I loved seeing my words in the newspaper."
