As J school graduates and successful professionals, you have expert insight on potential nominees. The CoJMC presents awards to outstanding advertising and public relations, broadcasting, and news-editorial alumni. Additional awards are in the category of service to the profession by a non-alumnus, Dean’s Award and the Broadcast Pioneer Award. All award winners must accept the award in person. Awards will be presented during the J Days celebration April 2-5, 2012.

J Days began in 1992 as a celebration of the successes of students and alumni. The weeklong festivities include a journalism honors convocation and the induction of scholars into the journalism honors society. In addition, it provides an opportunity for students to network with alumni and journalism professionals.

The presentation of the Alumni Awards of Excellence will be held during a luncheon Monday, April 2, 2012.

Please submit nominations by Monday, January 30, 2012.

Nominations may be submitted on line at: http://www.unl.edu/journalism/cojmc/alumni/alumniaward.shtml

The year 1960 saw the first televised presidential debate, the election of John F. Kennedy as president and the premiere of the Andy Griffith Show.

That year, Ken Elkins, the 2011 recipient of the Broadcast Pioneer Award, began working in television, maintaining a closed circuit television system at Offutt Air Base while serving in the U.S. Air Force.

Then, as an offshoot, he decided to apply for a position at the local news station. He began his career in broadcasting as a camera operator at KETV in Omaha while serving in the Air Force at Offutt.

“I wanted to work in the television station, and it all just worked out,” he said.

The West Virginia native and son of a coal miner moved to Nebraska in 1956 after joining the Air Force.

“I met my wife there, and we had our children there, so we just stayed,” he said. “It was sort of an adoptive home.”

After his stint with KETV, Elkins moved to Dubuque, Iowa where he was an assistant chief engineer and general manager at KDUB-TV.

In 1972, he came back to Nebraska and served as operations manager, general sales manager and general manager for KETV. When the Pulitzer Broadcasting Company bought the station in 1976, Elkins kept his position as general manager.

Four years later, he transferred to KSDK-TV in St. Louis, and in 1984, he was named president and chief executive officer of Pulitzer Broadcasting. There, he managed two radio stations and seven television stations.

Elkins served as chairman of the NBC Television Affiliate Board of Directors, as a member of the Television Board of Advertising and as a board member of the National Association of Broadcasters.

After a stint as president of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association, Elkins became a chairman, a position he still holds today. He also served on the NBC-TV affiliate board’s long-range planning committee and on the Television Board of Advertising.

Elkins was inducted into the Nebraska Broadcasting Association’s Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 1991 became a member of the Broadcast Music, Inc. board of directors. He served as its chairman from 2001 to 2004.

Out of this entire, lengthy list of accomplishments and awards, Elkins said there is no way he could pick a favorite experience.

“I’ve had so many good experiences it’s hard to name one that’s the best. I would say the experience I’ve had over the years, not singularly, but collectively,” he said. “It was the people I worked with that was probably the most pleasant experience of all.”

Elkins also said he most enjoyed the ability to help people to achieve their goals.

“The part I enjoyed the most was the people, not necessarily just the job,” he said.

Most students start college with at least an idea of what they want to study. Sometimes that track changes, and sometimes that track changes more than just once.

This was definitely the case for National Geographic photographer and UNL Alum Joel Sartore.

“Since I changed my major several times before settling on photojournalism, I took a fairly wide range of courses including everything from astronomy to bee-keeping,” Sartore said. “Once I got into photojournalism, though, there was nothing else I wanted to do.”

He said three UNL professors, George Tuck, Alfred “Bud” Pagel and Dick Streckfuss, finally helped him to realize that journalism really was the right choice for him.

“I learned that if you’re a journalist, the world is your oyster. If you’re a journalist, you can pretty much figure out a way to go anywhere on earth and cover anything on earth if you want to.”

Before making this realization, Sartore dabbled in different jobs before being employed by the Wichita Eagle and, eventually, National Geographic. Some of those jobs included working at a gas station, a tropical fish store and running a lawn care business.

During his time at UNL, Sartore worked as a photographer for the Daily Nebraskan. Before he began using his abilities to photograph some of the most rare and mysterious animals and places on the planet, he used his was able to photograph a different kind of elusive figure in Lincoln, Neb.

“I snuck into Johnny Cash’s dressing room at the Bob Devaney Sports Center in order to take his picture for the Daily Nebraskan. That was pretty good,” he said. “He was pretty nice and didn’t kick me out. It was excellent.”

Sartore eventually was hired by National Geographic and soon began traveling the globe on assignment. He says his favorite assignment was in 2006 when he photographed the search in Arkansas for the storied Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.

“The search for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker was a pure delight to work on because I’ve been a huge fan of the bird since I was a child. I got to see firsthand where the bird was sighted, with the very people who had seen it.”

Sartore has traveled to all over the U.S. and to countries as far away as Israel, Spain and Japan during his career photographing some of the world’s rarest plants and animals. However, it’s not the traveling that he really enjoys.

“I don’t enjoy traveling at all, and for a National Geographic photographer, that’s not a good thing. That’s a bad trait,” he admitted. “The traveling, to me, is a means to an end.”

Even though traveling isn’t his favorite pastime, during his 20-plus-year career and out of everywhere in the world that he’s traveled to during that time, Sartore says there’s one place that is his favorite.

“My favorite place to go is Antarctica because it’s pristine,” he said. “The penguins walk up to you to say ‘hello.’ The fur seal pups sit in your lap.”

He’s spent a so-far very illustrious career as a photographer abroad, and Sartore said although he wishes he could do every story about Nebraska, he recommends a trip to Antarctica for everyone.

“It’s just the one place everyone should see before they die, besides Nebraska of course.”

Susan Phalen

When Susan Phalen began her education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she had no idea what she wanted to do. She couldn’t have guessed that she would become Communications Director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. Congress.

“I was undeclared for at least the first semester,” said Susan Phalen. “Probably the first year, even.” As uncertain as Phalen found her freshman year at UNL to be, there’s no uncertainty today. She now works closely with the media and, commonly, with classified information.

Phalen, who was honored during J Days in April with a 2011 Alumni Award of Excellence, is responsible for communicating with journalists efficiently, while avoiding the mention of classified information.

“It’s a little stressful at first,” she said. “There are consequences for divulging things you shouldn’t divulge.”

Phalen must answer questions from journalists, often in regard to information she cannot share. This can be difficult, especially over the course of time, she said. Phalen tries to stay away from classified information whenever possible to avoid complications.

“The only thing I have going for me in this is my integrity,” she said. “I can keep myself from knowing specific pieces of information so I can honestly answer, ‘I don’t know the answer to that.’”

Before her job with Congress, Phalen spent time in France working as the public advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development . In Afghanistan, she worked as the director of Strategic Communications and Public Affairs for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

In this position, Phalen worked with journalists doing stories that had the potential to endanger lives. She said she acknowledged the importance of getting the story out, but stressed the necessity to minimize the negative impact on individuals or their families.

“In war zones, the absolute best in people comes out and the worst in people comes out,” she said. “I often wonder if you would recognize the best if you hadn’t also seen the worst at the same time because they’re so extreme.”

Phalen grew up in air force bases around the country, dreaming first of becoming a dumpster truck driver, then a doctor.

But after spending a year at UNL trying to figure out her future, Phalen found herself leaning towards journalism.

“I love talking to people,” she said. “I love telling stories and hearing other people’s stories. It’s a good fit.”

Phalen said she took away countless friendships from her years at UNL and maintains these to this day.

“It’s fun to watch the different paths our lives have taken, but we always have this common thing that brings us back together,” she said. “And that’s the university.”

Richard Alloway, an associate professor of journalism at UNL, recalls having Phalen as a student.

“She was somebody, even at the time, we thought was probably going to go really far,” he said.

Alloway said he was surprised when he found out about Phalen’s time in Afghanistan, but not surprised she would agree to do it.

“I’m always thrilled and knocked out by where our students end up working and the kind of tasks they end up willingly taking on,” he said.

After graduating from UNL, Phalen found herself in Guam working for a radio station. After her return, Phalen “got bit by the political bug” and began her career working on the political side of journalism. This turn of events was unanticipated.

“If someone had asked me to retrace that, how did you choreograph that path, I never would’ve imagined the path could be walked,” she said.

Phalen’s career has led her to a variety of jobs. She has worked for the State Department; in the Press Office for the Bush/Cheney Campaign in 2000; for former Congressman Henry Bonilla; for former Senator Chuck Hagel; and the press advance team for the president of the United States on various international summits and presidential visits.

The 2011 Alumni Award of Excellence from the UNL College of Journalism and Mass Communications is one of a many awards she’s received during her career, but she says “the award that I enjoy most is the long-term friendships that I’ve had.”

Family is very important to Phalen, and she said she was grateful her parents, were in attendance for her College of Journalism and Mass Communications alumni award.

“If you’re in it for the awards, you’re in it for the wrong reasons because the awards will end up in a shoebox,” she said. “The experiences will end up in your heart forever.”

Phalen said journalists need to know how to listen and should travel. They also must know how to handle ethical dilemmas.

“How you handle those is a true testament to your character and who you are as a person and you’ve surrounded yourself with,” she said.

Phalen is most passionate in speaking about her job when it involves positively impacting others.

“I think I am most proud when I have the opportunity to use the position I’m in to help other people in small ways and in huge ways,” she said. “And sometimes that makes the newspaper and sometimes it doesn’t. But it always changes lives.”

Greg Andersen has tackled some big challenges in his advertising career. He’s also had a lot of fun. He shared some of his experiences and advice with students, faculty and staff during J Days 2011, during which he received a 2011 Alumni Award of Excellence.

Andersen joined Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) in 2006 as director of engagement planning for North America and is now chief operating officer of the New York office of that international creative advertising agency.

Andersen’s work has focused on business and brand-building in the financial service sector, in telecommunications and technology and in the automotive and beverage industries. His two decades of experience in account management and strategic planning has included clients such as Saab, Verizon, Foster’s beer, GMC trucks and Nokia.

A native of Millard, Andersen attended UNL, graduating with his B.A. in 1990 and beginning his lifelong dedication to the strategy and creativity of advertising. He has worked for DeVito/Verdi, Euro, Merkley Newman Harty and Lowe New York.

When he joined BBH in 2006, he introduced media channel thinking as part of the strategic and creative process and oversaw the agency’s full-service media department. In early 2008, he was promoted to managing director of BBH New York. His new responsibilities included developing the innovation agenda for the agency, including the development of BBH Labs, the company’s global innovation unit that creates tools for more effective marketing, using technology to reach more people in more ways.

BBH is a British agency that was founded in 1982 and now has offices in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Mumbai.

Eric Newton

Eric Newton is an editor. He’s an author. He’s an award-winner many times over. He’s a founder. He’s a teacher. Newton is also a senior adviser to the president of the Knight Foundation, a non-profit organization working to promote journalism and the communities it affects.

Newton spoke at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications honors convocation on April 7. His remarks focused on the changing environment for journalists and the problem that he calls “comfort news.”

Newton said his most significant accomplishment with the Knight Foundation has been working with trustees to increase the foundation’s investment in journalism and media innovation.

“We’ve granted $300 million over the last 10 years to 400 projects involving tens of thousands of journalists and many millions of news users,” he said.

Newton joined the Knight Foundation in 2001. He was journalism program director before his promotion to vice president for journalism, eventually taking on his current position today.

Prior to working at the Knight Foundation, Newton was the managing editor of the Newseum.

Joe Urschel, executive director emeritus of the Newseum, worked with Newton on the development of the first museum for news, originally located in Arlington, Va.

“I found that Eric was a guy at the Newseum who had the most concrete idea of what it could be,” he said.

Newton was invaluable in the process of getting the Newseum up and started, Urschel said, describing Newton as the engine that was driving it all and a great advocate for the protection of the First Amendment.

Newton was also managing editor of the Oakland Tribune in Oakland, Calif. where his publication received not only many awards, but a Pulitzer Prize.

The changing nature of journalism was the biggest challenge Newton has faced in his career.

“The digital age is changing everything about journalism–from our definitions of who journalists are, what news is, which medium is right for the time and place – all the way to managing a two-way relationship with the people formerly known as the audience,” he said.

Newton studied journalism at the undergraduate level at San Francisco State University.  He received his Master of Arts degree from the University of Birmingham, England. He said learning how to communicate clearly and honestly proved most beneficial in the professional world.

“It’s harder than it sounds,” he said. “And it’s important in any job, not just journalism.”

Good journalism requires certain components, Newton said.

“Great journalists have open and nimble minds that also can think sharply and critically,” he said. “Above all, they have a heart-felt desire to engage in the fair, accurate, contextual search for truth.”

Newton offered advice for beginning journalists.

“Work hard,” he said. “Have fun. Collaborate. Become comfortable with continuous change. You may not get rich. But you can leave the world a richer place.”

Newton has written many books over the years, including “Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists,” “Capture the Moment,” “Mega Media,” “News, Improved,” and “News in a New America.”

He is the recipient of many awards, including a Peabody Award for “Mosaic: World News From the Middle East.”

Eric Newton

Thanks very much to your dean — and American news pioneer — Gary Kebbel for the invitation to deliver the Seline Memorial Lecture here at your great university tonight, truly one of the top journalism and mass communication programs in the country.

I remember when Gary first came to Knight Foundation. Here’s the guy who helped build America Online into the biggest digital news site of its time. And he was going to help us at Knight become philanthropic leaders in the risky world of media innovation.

On his first day, I glanced over at him, and he looks terrified, paralyzed. He’s just sitting there. So I say, “What’s wrong, Gary?” And he replies: “Your computers … they … won’t … let … me … Instant Message! How do you people talk to each other?!”

That’s your new dean. If he’s not connected to the ever-flowing stream of news and information, he’s not happy.

Fortunately, we got it all straightened out, and during the next few years Gary helped us invest about $100 million in media innovation. Our foundation became known across the country for his project, the Knight News Challenge.

The Knight Foundation is based on the personal fortunes of Jack and Jim Knight, who built Knight newspapers, once the largest newspaper group in America, probably better known to you as Knight-Ridder.

The Knight brothers cared about informed and engaged communities, and that’s what we care about.

Media innovation helps us do everything from increasing broadband access in the communities we serve to creating new tools for hundreds of news organizations.

Today, in part because of the work we have been doing, we can talk about the existence of something called the “media innovation community.”

We can see communicators and technologists working together on the future of news and information. That’s progress from the days when journalists had nothing to say about their technological future.

Once, I was a journalism student sitting out there in an audience not unlike this one. And I must admit also sitting out there as a parent.

As a student, I was excited (and only a little bored by the speaker). But when I sat there as a parent, I was terrified.

Today’s world of media is entirely different. Today, I can see, the students are much more excited and the parents are much more terrified!

All you need to do is plug into the stream and you see journalism and mass communication developments coming faster and more forcefully than ever.

This is the dawn of a new age in communication, the digital age, and it is even richer with invention than the dawn of the industrial age.

New tools are being invented at a mind-boggling pace. Instead of the telegraph, the telephone and the light bulb, we’re talking about microchips, laptops, smart phones, tablets. We’re talking about companies like Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter: from digital zero to number one in the market, nearly overnight.

As the legendary journalist Hodding Carter III once said, “This is the most exciting time ever to be a journalist – if you are not in search of the past.” The same I would say applies to being any kind of communicator – advertising, public relations, you name it.

That’s what’s exciting. The students of today actually are going to create the journalism and mass communication of tomorrow. You aren’t stuck in formats created a century ago. You get to build the new companies and the new products and the new standards of the digital age.

New standards? That’s right.  New tools create opportunities to make new rules. This is why it’s a great time to be in journalism education, if you can keep up.

Let me say it again.

New tools create new rules.

How cool is that? You get to revisit everything that matters about communication, about journalism, about the fair, accurate, contextual search for truth, and figure out what that will mean in 2015, when most of the data traffic in the U.S. will be through mobile devices. You can figure out what it means in the world described by Pew’s Internet and American Life Project, where news and information are becoming more personal, portable and participatory.

You can figure out how one communicator with good ideas and the right tools can act like a hundred old-time communicators. You can understand how news and information now flows in an interconnected ecosystem and not in the old one-way industrial-age assembly-line system.

This kind of adventure, this excitement, this digital gold rush, attracts smart people who like risks.

You do need to learn certain things.

Clear expression, most of all. And how to dig for the facts. But also how to speak technology: It’s a language. And the ability to quickly pick up any subject — business skills if you can. Being able to work collaboratively in teams. Being comfortable in work cultures that continuously change. Being able to develop content that not only informs communities but engages them.

So learn that. Do that. Then go get a great job. And if you don’t like the jobs they have, you can try to go out and make up one of your own.

This, of course, is what terrifies us parents.

What do you mean that my child must learn to create the businesses of tomorrow? What about the bills of today?

When parents of journalism students look at the news, no doubt they focus on the headlines about the woes facing traditional media. In the last several years alone, 15,000 traditional journalism jobs have been eliminated in America The lion’s share, some 13,500, have been cut from in daily newspapers.

Some say this is just the recession. I disagree. The big news out of this week’s meeting of the newspaper group, the American Society of News Editors, was that the recession is over and papers have added back a grand total of 100 newsroom jobs. Only one hundred.

This is a new digital age, profoundly different from what has come before.

People today have the ability to communicate individually and globally, to create their own news and information, to seek it out, to pass it along, act on it instantly.

We have never had a world with five billion cell phones before. We don’t know what that means.

It is difficult for institutions to get their institutional heads around how much change is coming. But the evidence is too great to ignore. As my boss, Knight Foundation president Alberto Ibargüen, puts it: “Change is the new normal.”

There’s one chart in particular that sticks in my mind. It shows the household penetration of the daily newspapers in the United States. Just after WWII, there were more than 1.2 newspapers in the United States for every household.  Morning papers, afternoon papers, families took more than one. Today it’s .4. Today a household subscribes, on average, to less than half a paper. Sometimes those papers are so thin it feels like you are getting half a paper.

The chart shows the decline in households with daily papers in America has gone down in a nearly perfectly straight line, with the same slope, for 70 years.

Does that mean no one wants the news and ads that newspapers bring? No. What is dying is a particular way of getting that news to you. And you have to ask yourself whether or not it really makes sense to keep doing it that way.

Look at how it works: You have to kill a tree, then make paper, then get a huge press and all that ink and print the paper full of news – even though news happens all the time you only can do this once a day — then you throw it into big trucks, drive it to a faraway place, throw it in bundles onto the curb, then load papers into cars – used to be kids on bikes, now it’s cars — then fling the papers out the car windows onto doorsteps, sometimes with little plastic bags on them when it’s raining. Sometimes.

It’s no wonder people just Google the news. I used to edit newspapers. And I love newspapers. But they are not the fastest, easiest and most reliable way of getting news today.

When I asked the scholar Phil Meyer, the father of something called Precision Journalism, to take that household penetration chart and extend it all the way down to zero, he used his statistical magic, and he did it.

Here’s what Phil says:

If nothing happens to change it, the last reader will read the last printed, home-delivered, paid subscription daily newspaper in America in April 2040.

He didn’t have an exact day.

Of course, says Phil, and many other people, including many of you here, something will happen. Somehow the line will level off. It can never go to zero.

But I ask you, seriously, why would that be? You have a line that’s been going in the same direction for 70 years. What is going to happen that’s suddenly going to change direction? It would be nice if we, the baby boom generation, didn’t die. Then we could just keep taking those newspapers forever. It’s just not likely, though I wish it were true.

Seventy years of straight-line history says something is going to happen to that American tradition we’ve have for so long – the home-delivered, paid subscription, printed daily newspaper — that it will be gone within the lifetimes of the students in this room.

Is this a horrifying prospect? No. We’ll just get the news on tablets and save trees.

This change in delivery mechanisms is making more jobs for communicators, not fewer.

Even though there are fewer writers, photographers, editors and designers in traditional news media, there are many more of those in media as a whole.

Looking forward, job opportunities are actually good. How many 60 year olds in this room can say they truly understand social media? Someone is going to do those jobs. All you need to do is open your mind to a bigger definition of news and information, of journalism and mass communication.

You might end up doing the website of a nonprofit, and doing things just as journalistically as you might have done it at a daily newspaper. Or at any number of new companies, or at a company of your own.

The sector of web production will grow and grow and grow.

In just in the past five years, the percentage of graduates of journalism and mass communication programs getting jobs writing for or editing on or designing or otherwise working on the World Wide Web has gone from roughly 20 percent of graduates to roughly 60 percent.

Parents, I think you are lucky. A journalism and mass communication degree is one of the best ways anyone can start an education. These are the great liberal arts degrees of the 21st century.

Every workplace in America needs clear digital communicators.

This, I think, is why enrollment in journalism and mass communication programs is booming even as traditional journalism jobs are shrinking.

To lead in any field — the law, business, nonprofit, the government world – you need to be able to communicate.

Now some are saying, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s with all this happy news? Great students, fantastic university, wonderful dean … hmmm … what are you not telling us?” Well, good for you, critical thinkers. So let’s talk about something in this new age of communication that I worry about, something I think we can do something about.

It’s the downside, the dark side, the soft underbelly of the digital age.  When we say that news is more “portable, personal and participatory,” the personal part means you can use the new digital devices to surround yourself with the news and information that you want — and only that.

More easily than ever before, you can surround yourself in a digital cocoon.

Only talk to the friends you want to talk to. Only see the stuff you already agree with, care about what you already care about.

You can fix your digital settings to hold at bay the world’s ability to intrude, limit serendipity, block the shocks and hard truths and other stuff you don’t agree with from making its way into your orbit.

And every day we design more products that let you do this better than you could yesterday.

In this era of information overload, 70 percent of the country is overwhelmed by all the information and is happy to use these devices to manage it.

It’s a normal human reaction to want to protect yourself from this swirling invisible neural net of electrons flying around the world with the sum total of human knowledge, doubling faster and faster.

So we – and I mean the human race — like to react by doing what is comfortable, seeking safety, security.

We find ourselves, for example, eating “comfort food.” I know about that. Cashews and a frappuccino. Ice cream. Chocolate. It’s tasty. It makes you feel good, but is not that good for you. We know this kind of food is not all that nutritious. But we eat it anyway.  Comfort food. Not healthy. Doesn’t matter.

News and information are like food. Think of news as food for your mind.

A lot of the things going on in the news business are also going on in the food business. Just a few companies producing a huge amount of news, just like food. The computer keeps your news fresh just like the refrigerator keeps your food fresh. Regular folks like to grow food in their backyards, and citizens also enjoy writing their own news. We have folks who want more local news just like the folks who want more local farms: the folks who like that honest, home-grown organic sustainable news just like the folks who want that home-grown, organic sustainable food.

So just like comfort food, there’s something that I like to call comfort news. This is the news and information that makes you feel good but may not be good for you.

A lot of political news these days is comfort news. You know what I’m talking about. You see somebody on cable TV or on the internet. And you say, “Yeah… I agree with that guy! He’s right!” And OK, he has an opinion, you’ve got an opinion, and they are the same. But is that really news and information, and is that really good for you?

How much protein, how many facts, are really in all of that commentary? If one station tilts to the right and another tilts to the left, are they really giving you any nutrition? Or just making you feel good about what you already think?  They even have different facts. How can that be?

Comfort news is why so many people think the health care bill already has been repealed and Saddam Hussein was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

There are lots of kinds of comfort news, but the celebrity and entertainment kind doesn’t really bother me so much, though I must say, if that’s the only news you put in your head, all that brain candy will eventually take its toll.

There are no studies in what I am calling comfort news — it’s not even recognized yet as an actual category — but if there were, I predict they would show comfort news is  increasing in the United States.

In fact, we in the communications business are designing more and more products that make it easier and easier for you to surround yourself with a world that agrees with you.

It is a juggernaut, but we can still do things to improve the situation. 
For one thing, we can ask for honest labeling. If you are a news outlet, and you are tilting your news to conservatives, why don’t you just say so? If you put out news for liberals, why don’t you just say so?

What’s the harm in telling the truth in what’s in the news, the same way food labels tell us what’s really in there?

Knowing what’s really in the news you are consuming is called news literacy. It’s a combination of digital, media and civic literacy – and really important in the digital age, when everyone can produce news.

We need more of these 21st century literacies. The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities says these new literacies need to be taught in every level of education, but they aren’t.

Why is this important? Because society needs healthy flows of news and information just like the life on Earth needs sunlight. It helps open societies grow. We need facts, not just comfortable opinions, to make good things happen in the world.

What does that have to do with you, here in this room? In a few minutes, many of you will be picking up awards for your good work. I would like to suggest that when you pick up that award you also pick up a responsibility: a responsibility to use your media literacy to teach others. You’ve gone to a great college of journalism and mass communications. You can pass along what you’ve learned about how to think critically about media, about the difference between facts and opinion.

News literacy is as important to the collective mental health of a society as nutritional literacy is to our nation’s physical well-being. Because of where you are going to school, you are becoming digitally and media literate. Volunteer at the local library or community center. Teach others what you are learning.

If you do, you will be in good company. Throughout the history of news there have always been those more interested in news for private gain and others interested in news for the public good. Every communicator has to decide if it’s one or the other or both. You must decide where you stand on that issue.

Jack Knight knew where he stood. More than 40 years ago, he said great newspapers “seek to bestir the people into an awareness of their own condition, provide inspiration for their thoughts and rouse them to pursue their true interests.”

If that sounds awfully important, it’s because it is. Scary.

The fear factor reminds me of a poster I once saw about skydiving. “If at first you don’t succeed,” the poster said, “skydiving is not for you.”

But the biggest mistake any of us can make today is to be afraid of mistakes.

Media innovation requires mistakes. It is not skydiving. I remember another quote on a wall, this one at the Newseum, in a display of the sometimes hilarious mistakes newspapers have made over the years.

It said: “To err is human, to correct divine.”

So remember that, and what I am saying here tonight really will come true.

You will invent the news and information systems of tomorrow, and that will make this world a much better place.

Courtesy photo, Todd Baer

After the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008, journalist Todd Baer searched for the untold story. He found out that a fisherman from Gujarat, India, was one of the first people killed. And he told that man’s story.

“That fisherman’s life is just as valuable as a wealthy businessman who was shot at the Taj Mahal Hotel,” Baer said. “That’s what journalism is about. Journalism is all about giving a voice to the people who can’t get a voice.”

Baer has traveled all over the world, finding people whose stories need to be told. He’s reported in Gaza, Lebanon, Kenya, Pakistan, Haiti and Iran, covering conflicts, wars, bombings and presidential assassinations. Baer has followed big international stories from country to country, no matter how dangerous.

In April, the 1997 J school grad visited Lincoln when the journalism college gave him the 2010 Will and Susan Norton Award for International Journalism. Baer was the featured speaker at the J Days honors convocation.

Growing up caring

Baer grew up in New York City, part of a Lebanese American family. From the time he was a child, he was a news junkie, his mother, Judy Baer, remembers:

“While other children his age were playing video games and listening to rock music, Todd was watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite and listening to a 24-hour news radio station.”

Judy Baer remembers when Anwar Sadat was assassinated in October 1981 and Todd woke his parents to tell them the breaking news.

As a teenager, Todd idolized Peter Jennings, who inspired his passion for international news, Judy Baer said.

Although his life-long dream has been to be an international reporter, Baer’s first job was as a desk assistant in New York with ABC News.  While he was there, ABC sent Baer, who had been a wrestler at UNL, to Iran to cover a wrestling competition. It was the first athletic exchange between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution — and Baer’s first opportunity to report internationally.

When he left ABC, he worked as a reporter for local news stations in Austin, Texas, Hartford, Conn., and Minneapolis, Minn.

Baer received the Will and Susan Norton Award for International Journalism at the college's Honors Convocation April 8

In 2007, his contract with KSTP-TV in Minneapolis was about to expire, and Baer had two choices:  to accept an offer to renew his contract or take an opportunity to help start a television network in Pakistan.

“I took the biggest risk of my life. I traded in a three-year contract for a guarantee of 10 weeks of work in arguably the most dangerous city in the world, Karachi, Pakistan,” Baer said. “I was quite nervous, but I knew that this was a hot place, and if you’re going to be a foreign correspondent you have to be in the hot places.”

After training the staff at GEO-TV in Pakistan and  helping to launch TV news networks — in India and in Nairobi, Kenya — Baer freelanced for six months for CNN and ABC News, covering the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the suicide bombing outside the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan. He also was the first American reporter to interview the family of U.S. President Barack Obama in Kogelo, Kenya.

In 2008, Baer joined Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour English-language news channel based in Doha, Qatar. He worked primarily in the New Delhi bureau and later in Beirut, Lebanon.

Finding the important, interesting stories

Rick Alloway, a broadcasting professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, remembers Baer as a student andh ow he would stop by frequently to talk about journalism opportunities. Since he graduated, Baer has sent Alloway some of his work online, and Alloway said he has been impressed.

“Todd is willing to go wherever the big story is,” Alloway said. “There are certainly safer places to go, but Todd knows that’s where the interesting stories are. Some of the most important stories to tell are from the most dangerous places in the world, and Todd goes to seek those.”

To learn tips for survival when reporting, Al Jazeera sent Baer to a one-week training course conducted by former British military soldiers in London. He learned basic first aid, he learned how to spot land mines and he learned that he should often wear a Kevlar bulletproof vest.

“A lot of people don’t realize that when you go into a war zone, it is extremely serious,” Baer said. “The reality hits you when your boss asks you for your blood type and an emergency phone number. There’s a chance you’re going to be killed, and that’s the reality that we deal with.”

Baer said his team takes many precautions and talks about security constantly. When reporting, Baer can take two approaches:  high profile with armed security and cars or a low profile without protection. Baer often takes a low-profile approach in order to blend in and report the story fairly. He rarely has been embedded with a military unit.

Baer said journalists today are targets of terrorists or militant groups. Because many reporters have been killed or injured, news companies are reluctant to send people into a conflict zone. He appreciates Al Jazeera’s commitment to “fearless journalism,” and while the news organization knows that reporting is risky, it also knows the stories need to be told.

Judy Baer knows her son’s work takes him to some “scary places,” but she understands the motivation.

“My feelings can be summed up in two words: fear and happiness. Fear of his working in challenging places balanced with happiness that Todd is doing what he loves most.”

Reporting those stories is his way of helping the people he reports on, Baer said.

“My contribution is that I can tell this story,” he said. “If I do my job, other people will find out about it.”

Phil Witt gave advice to journalism students at a visit to the J school

Phil Witt’s primary job may be anchoring the evening newscasts on WDAF-TV FOX 4 in Kansas City, but working for his community comes in as a close second.

Witt, who graduated from the J school in 1974, received the Alumni Award of Excellence for Outstanding Broadcasting during the 2010 J Days celebration in April.

While Witt, who joined WDAF in 1979, received the alumni award for his years of dedicated reporting, a big part of his life has been dedicated to leading and supporting community projects in the Kansas City area.

“[Volunteering] has been my joy and my privilege,” he said. “I like to hope I have possibly had an impact on the people I’ve been involved with, but in reality it has enriched my life.

“I hate to think I would go through life reporting on problems without being a part of solutions. … Journalism brings issues to light, but more needs to be done.”

Getting involved

Witt has worked with the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the American Cancer Society and several programs that support people with HIV/AIDS. He has received numerous awards for his volunteer work, including a Presidential Citation. Witt said Kansas City has a rich tradition of news people being involved in the community.

Professor Larry Walklin, who was Witt’s broadcasting instructor at the J school, said Witt exemplifies what journalists want to be like.

“He is intelligent, thoughtful, ethical and understands the power of being in a big market. … Even though he is well-known, he knows how to handle himself and is still the basic guy from Winside.”

That’s Winside, Neb., a town of 450 people in the northeast corner of Nebraska where Witt grew up. He described himself as a child of the first TV generation that was addicted to television, but it was an American tragedy that made him specifically love the news.

“It was sixth grade in the fall, and my teacher came rushing in breathless, announcing President Kennedy had been killed. Class was canceled, and I rushed homed and turned on the TV. It was November in Nebraska and there was not much to do,” he said. “So for three straight days I watched TV news, and so I became addicted to TV news.”

During his senior year in high school, Witt reported on local news for the radio station in nearby Wayne, Neb., and then attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After graduation, Witt worked at KMEG television station in Sioux City, Iowa, for three years and then moved on to KCCI in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1979, Witt made his way to Kansas City, Mo., where he still lives with his wife; their three grown children live nearby.

KC Hyatt disaster helps shape career

Only two years after arriving in Kansas City, Mo., Witt covered the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse that killed more than 114 people and injured more than 200. He called the event his most memorable story because of the effect it had on the community and the impact it had on him as a young reporter.

Another career-shaping story was the news series and documentary he produced about Kansas City’s war against drugs in the 1990s and for which he won a regional Emmy.

Witt said he is satisfied with his career thus far, but he hopes to continue to challenge himself and do good work for as long as the industry will keep him around. He said the key to journalism is adaptability, and he looks forward to seeing if he can continue to keep up with the technological changes in the news industry. No matter how many changes he has seen in his career, Witt said, “that will be a drop in the bucket compared to what [future journalists] will see.”

Honoring work with breadth and depth

According to Ann Pedersen, a classmates of Witt’s and a board member of the CoJMC Alumni Association, which selects alumni award winners, Witt’s continual dedication to journalism made him an obvious choice.

“Phil has worked in the Kansas City market most of his professional career,” Pedersen wrote in an e-mail. “He has been honored by his community and his peers for the breadth and quality of his work.  These are the type of graduates we look for when selecting individuals to honor for the alumni awards.  I just wish we would have honored him even earlier than we did.”

While he is now recognized as one of Kansas City’s major news anchors, Witt said he still thinks of himself as a reporter. He said he prides himself on being a good storyteller and enjoys meeting interesting people and telling their stories to viewers. This dedication has earned him many awards, with the Alumni Award of Excellence for Outstanding Broadcasting being only the latest.

“It floored me,” Witt said of receiving the award. “I know what wonderful undergraduates this school turns out, and I know some past honorees, and I am just honored and privileged to be recognized by what I consider one of the best journalism and mass communications colleges in the country.”

Lise Olsen (left) receives news-editorial alumna award from Interim Dean Charlyne Berens

Lise Olsen is adventurous.

A 1988 J school grad, Olsen dug deep for stories in the classroom — and in the basement of the Union at the Daily Nebraskan.

Her job as a working journalist has taken her to several states and countries — and she’s even helped reform state and federal laws through her work.

Olsen, now an investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle, has always had a courageous spirit and a desire to travel, and she still finds excitement in each of her endeavors.

The excitement in her work is what keeps her going.

And her willingness and fearlessness in journalism earned her the 2010 College of Journalism and Mass Communications’ Outstanding News-Editorial Alumna award in March, too.

Becoming a journalist at UNL

Olsen grew up in Lincoln and never thought she’d attend the university in town.

But after visiting the J school and meeting a few professors, she decided she’d give journalism — and UNL — a try.

She quickly met professors whom she remembers as “caring” and “great mentors.”

Bud Pagel was one of those.

She saw the good things Pagel did for the college and its students, like creating opportunities with big name newspaper internships. Olsen wanted to be part of that.

She started by writing features stories for the Daily Nebraskan her freshman year. By her junior year, she was a DN columnist.

“At that time they had a real strong staff at the DN,” Pagel said. “She and a guy named Ad Hudler both had columns. They’d write columns, and they’d argue over who was more influential in the column.”

During her junior year, Olsen started working part time for the Lincoln Journal.

That gig lead to an internship at The Grand Island Independent, where she covered all kinds of beats and worked on two special projects, including a series of stories on Laotians who’d come to work at local meat packing plants and transformed the city’s culture.

The following year, Olsen headed to St. Petersburg, Fla., to work at the Times.

Fluent in French, she took a year and studied abroad in France, interning at a French-language newspaper in Paris.

Journalism students spent some one-on-one time with Lise Olsen when she returned to UNL to accecpt an alumna award of excellence

Leaving college and heading for the real world

When Olsen graduated in 1988, she followed some wise advice Pagel had given her years before.

“He thought that students would really quickly take a job after graduation,” Olsen said. “He said to wait and look for opportunities.”

And that’s just what she did.

While she returned from France, Olsen made arrangements to meet with newspaper editors and old friends on the East Coast. She flew to Florida, then hopped on a bus and started visiting her contacts all the way north to Washington, D.C.

Her friend and fellow J school grad Kema Geroux recalls reconnecting with Olsen on during that trip.

“One of the things that makes Lise a really good journalist and a really great friend is that she’s really loyal, and she’s very dedicated to people,” said Geroux, now a site facilitator at a challenge course program in Virginia Beach. “She’s extremely tenacious when she gets an idea and she’s very good at tracking down what she needs to know, too.”

Olsen received several job offers but settled in Norfolk, Va., with a job at the Virginian-Pilot. There, she worked her way up from a general assignment reporter to the education beat.

“She cares about people, and she cares about making sure they’re treated fairly,” Geroux said. “She’s the kind of person who champions people who otherwise might not have an advocate.”

Her best story as an education writer, Olsen said, was a series of pieces documenting nepotism and corruption by a school superintendent who got fired as a result.

She covered city hall and worked as a computer assisted reporting specialist on the paper’s projects staff, too.

“I got into it (computer assisted reporting) because I was already into investigative reporting,” Olsen said. “Computers give you another way to ask questions — but you have to know what question to ask.”

Olsen started attending Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc. conferences as a UNL student — and it was at IRE that she learned more about computer-assisted reporting.

“It all came about in my first years of journalism,” Olsen said. “Once it started happening, I was really fascinated with it.”

Change of plans

By a series of weird circumstances, Olsen said, she and her husband — who was her boyfriend at the time — pooled their money in 1993 and headed to Mexico and South America. The trip was a longtime dream of her boyfriend’s, Olsen said. He wanted to visit and explore all the countries between where he lived and where his grandparents lived.

Living off $10,000 for the entire year, the couple hiked around the continents while she freelanced for a couple of publications.

The trip, though, was more to just have fun, get a break and get better at Spanish, Olsen said. When the adventure wound down, Olsen returned to the Virginian-Pilot but then learned about another interesting opportunity.

She found out IRE wanted to start a project in Mexico. They were looking for a journalist who knew both computer-assisted reporting and Spanish. Olsen had both qualities and stood out among the other journalists who applied.

“It gave me a big advantage and got me the job,” she said.

As its founding director, Olsen helped build IRE in Mexico to a 200-member organization. She produced a newsletter and worked from the small office in Mexico City and traveled all around Latin America speaking and giving workshops.

But at the end of the two-year grant, Olsen’s time was up. She’d gotten married before moving to Mexico and her husband, Ron, had struggled to find work there as a veterinarian. She decided that it was his turn to pick their next home.

Her only request was that his job take them to a place where she’d be able to get a job at a newspaper, Olsen said. He chose an island in the Pacific Northwest, and she easily found a job at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

She wrote about illegally detained immigrants and Washington’s death penalty policies. The detention series led to a U.S. Supreme Court case and the freeing of more than a hundred immigrants. The death penalty series, in which she’d reported that drunken and disbarred lawyers had handled some capital cases, led to improvements in state rules about the appointment of defense attorneys.

But her time in Seattle was cut short because of an offer from another big newspaper:  the Houston Chronicle.

Chasing the adventure to Texas

Olsen and her husband decided this move could be another chapter in their busy lives as adventurers. So they headed to Texas in 2007.

She’s been at the Chronicle ever since, writing mostly criminal justice and civil rights stories, Olsen said.

“I’ve done a lot in my career to help people, and I feel good about that,” she said.

Most recently, she’s been investigating and writing stories about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast.

And while the grind at work can be overwhelming, Olsen keeps her cool by taking breaks and staying grounded. For Olsen, keeping the balance — and knowing when enough is enough — is key.

“The truth is that journalism is an extremely high burnout profession,” she said. “The first five years you lose a lot of people in the newsroom, and by the time you’re 10 years into journalism, there’s even fewer survivors.”

Fortunately, she’s had the opportunity to work for companies that have allowed her time off and flexibility in her work.

In addition to her job at the paper, Olsen also teaches computer-assisted reporting classes and seminars through IRE.

She loves spending time with her husband and their two boys. They like to hike, camp and go to the kids’ various activities, including gymnastics and bowling.

The adventures continue.

For access to Olsen’s latest work, go to www.chron.com.