Where were you in ’62? From a modern communications and media
standpoint, the world was almost an unrecognizable place. What a difference a
half century makes, indeed.
During Bethany College’s annual Communications
Week, which is designed to help students prepare for careers in the
astonishingly fast-paced field of communications, faculty and guest speakers
reflected on the dramatic changes in journalism, broadcasting and public
relations/advertising that have transformed how we receive and process most of
our news and information. Sessions explored current trends in the
communications field and previewed those on the horizon, which promise more
startling developments.
In 1962, most Americans received their
daily news from the printed page—larger areas had several morning and afternoon
papers—and from nightly TV broadcasts by
three major networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) featuring trusted male-authority
figures and limited visuals. Videotape and live news coverage were in their
infancy. TV sports coverage lacked graphics and instant replay.
Online news sources and advertising, the
hundreds of cable TV options we now have, webstreaming and other media
developments familiar to us today were decades away. Public relations,
marketing and advertising were driven by “Mad Men” directing influential firms
in New York and a few other large cities.
When I began my career as a reporter for
newspapers in Buckhannon and Weston, the layout room was a place of waxed strips
of typed copy, X-ACTO knives and cumbersome paper paste-up sheets. Photos were
developed with chemicals in a darkroom.
Stories were still phoned in or banged out on a typewriter, not routed
electronically via computer. “Spell check” meant just that—check your own
spelling with a paper dictionary. A young reporter lived in fear of his
carefully crafted stories being ripped apart by the red pencil of an editor.
I’m grateful, however, for the training
I received there and at my alma mater, West Virginia Wesleyan College, where I
majored in communications and edited the campus paper, The Pharos. Although I only recently gave up carrying a reporter’s
notebook, I retain the journalist’s perspective to seek the truth.
Many of our speakers at Bethany during
“Comm Week” confirmed for our students the value of being an effective
communications professional—not just operating the latest technologies of one.
Bethany alumni Faith Daniels, former network news anchor and “Today” show host;
George Manahan of The Manahan Group in Charleston; Dan Lohman of Pikewood Creative; Margy Lang of Sportive Inc. E1 Fit and Larry
Meltzer, MM2PR, among other guest speakers, offered insights on the future of
integrated, digital and corporate media, as well as political campaigns, advertising,
product branding and conventional publishing. All expressed, in some form or
another, the value of telling a story, of the human factor in making effective
presentations, of communicating professionally and well.
More than that, we educators have long
recognized that today’s students process information differently. They’re
multi-tasking media manipulators; few will sit passively in front of a nightly
news broadcast or stare at the morning’s newspaper without a smart phone or a
laptop. Our sending-and-receiving students are online and everywhere at
once—like the information they seek. Yet fundamental standards of
communication, including accuracy and fairness, still apply; aspiring young
communications professionals, eager to hit “send,” hoist a camera or launch the
latest spin cycle, ignore them at their own peril.
The last word for Bethany’s Comm Week
belonged to long-time newspaper editor A. Parker “Park” Burroughs of the
Washington, PA, Observer Publishing Company, who will join us this fall as a
distinguished lecturer in journalism. In his remarks to the new class of the
Society of Collegiate Journalists at Bethany, he spoke of the dramatic changes
that he has witnessed in the business of print media during his 40-year career.
But he reminded them, “As journalists, you will always be in dogged pursuit of
the truth. When change comes, embrace it—but never forget your purpose.”
Amid the often profound change in our
society, and our search for the next breaking news or product break-through, it
is well for us to remember that guiding principle, lest we settle for something
other than the whole story.
# # #
Dr. Scott D. Miller is President and M.M.
Cochran Professor of Leadership Studies at Bethany College. A graduate of West
Virginia Wesleyan College, he has served as president of three private liberal
arts colleges during the past 22 years.
