{"id":111493,"date":"2016-04-14T09:36:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T13:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=111493"},"modified":"2021-06-28T10:32:07","modified_gmt":"2021-06-28T14:32:07","slug":"extra-extra-read-listen-watch-and-tweet-all-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/04\/extra-extra-read-listen-watch-and-tweet-all-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Extra! Extra! Read (Listen, Watch, and Tweet) All About It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago, \u201cthe news industry\u201d meant print publications, radio broadcasts, three television networks, and two major wire services. At the University of Connecticut, it meant Evan Hill.<\/p>\n

\"Evan<\/a>
Evan Hill, professor and head of the journalism department from 1965 to 1983, was personally recruited by then-President Homer Babbidge. (Archives and Special Collections, UConn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The reporter and World War II veteran had been personally recruited by UConn President Homer Babbidge \u2013 Babbidge drove, unannounced, to Hill\u2019s home in New Hampshire to persuade him to take the job \u2013 to establish a journalism program at the state\u2019s flagship university. Previously, journalism education at UConn had been overseen by the University\u2019s chief of communications, who was also in charge of publishing catalogs and extension bulletins.<\/p>\n

Today, as the department prepares for a weekend of workshops, panel discussions, and celebrations<\/a> to mark its 50 years of existence, it looks back on a history that has produced Pulitzer Prize winners and entrepreneurs; staffed the world\u2019s top media outlets with reporters, editors, and photographers; and shaped the face of journalism in Connecticut and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t make cookie-cutter journalists here,\u201d says Maureen Croteau \u201971, who has been department head since Hill retired in 1983. \u201cI think the kind of journalism education we provide, grounded in the fundamentals, and the fact that we\u2019re in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and more than half of our graduates have a second major, really account for the success we\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n

That success can be seen institutionally. From one faculty member in 1965, the department has grown to 10 full-time and 8 part-time faculty and staff, and is the only nationally accredited journalism program in New England. Its success is also evident in its graduates.<\/p>\n

A quick glance at the panelists for Friday\u2019s and Saturday\u2019s events include G. Claude Albert \u201972, one of the most familiar names in Connecticut news as longtime managing editor of the Hartford Courant<\/em> and now editor of the CT Mirror;<\/em> Glenn Smith \u201987, watchdog and public service editor at The Post and Courier<\/em> (Charleston, S.C.) and recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for public service; Curtis Wong \u201901, senior editor of Queer Voices at the Huffington Post;<\/em> and many others.<\/p>\n

One of those panelists is Doug Hardy \u201991, whose path through the news business shows both how the industry has changed, and how his UConn experiences prepared him for those changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always a print guy,\u201d said Hardy, who went from being a student journalist at the Daily Campus<\/em> to an internship at the Hartford Courant<\/em> to full-time jobs with newspapers in the state and in Colorado, before landing a job as an editor at the Journal Inquirer<\/em> in Manchester.<\/p>\n

But in 2012, Hardy left that job and joined his wife, Christine Stuart, who had built a fledgling website called CT News Junkie<\/a> into a daily must-read for the state\u2019s political movers and shakers.<\/p>\n

The move from the familiar world of print deadlines and front-page layouts to new models of revenue and reporting was more daunting than bromides about \u201cWeb 2.0\u201d would lead some to believe, Hardy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristine spent basically three years with people ignoring her,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a simple thing to launch a web-based news service.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while models have changed, what Hardy learned \u2013 as CT News Junkie heads toward the middle of its 11th year \u2013 is that fundamentals remain the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, good reporting provided quickly is what people value,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just as true for recent grads, who enter a world where social media and the Internet aren\u2019t transitions so much as established facts of life.<\/p>\n

Kathleen McWilliams \u201915 landed her first full-time newspaper job a week after graduating, and has already moved on to the state\u2019s largest newspaper, covering South Windsor, East Hartford, and breaking news for the Hartford Courant.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI would not be at the Courant<\/em> if it wasn\u2019t for the faculty in the journalism department,\u201d McWilliams said.<\/p>\n

When McWilliams started at UConn, she expected to spend her time crafting print stories, and found that, in addition, she learned everything from shooting video to writing tweets that will appeal to news-hungry audiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI covered the UConn women\u2019s victory parade last weekend, and one of the most fun things was being able to shoot video of players\u2019 comments and share that,\u201d McWilliams said. \u201cThat\u2019s an experience you don\u2019t really get from just reading a newspaper, and that\u2019s something I learned at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those skills might have been foreign to Evan Hill when Homer Babbidge showed up at his doorstep in New Hampshire 50 years ago, said Croteau, but the department has proven that UConn journalism graduates have a great deal in common, regardless of when they got their diplomas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to be critical thinkers. They have to be able to write clearly. They have to understand fairness. All of those things are fundamental,” she said. “They haven\u2019t changed at all, and they aren\u2019t going to change in the next 50 years, either.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn’s journalism department marks 50 years in the news business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":111494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,1715,2317,2225,2234],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-111493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-community-impact","category-journalism","category-uconn-storrs","category-university-life"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-19 06:27:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111493"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111674,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111493\/revisions\/111674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/111494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111493"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=111493"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=111493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}