Editor’s Note: For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This March – April 1972 Classic follows ex-Lariat Editor Ella Wall Prichard as she visits the journalism department after many years of being away.
When an ex-Lariat editor returns to the campus after nine years, the first impression is that time has stood still in the journalism department. Harrington Hall hasn’t changed perceptibly since the girls moved out and the journalism department moved in from the barracks on Seventh Street in September, 1962.
Whatever money has been spent on the building since 1962 hardly shows. Maybe the building is so old, nothing would show. Or maybe nothing much has been done because of anticipation of the Castellaw Communications Center. After many delays, construction is scheduled to start this summer.
Dave Cheavens, department chairman from 1962 until his death in December, 1970, is gone, but his influence is everywhere. David McHam, who left the Houston Post to come to Baylor with Cheavens, is still there, along with later additions to the faculty. Adrian Vaughan came to Baylor from Texas Tech in 1965 to teach public relations and photography; he was named chairman after Cheavens’ death.
Harry Marsh, with experience at the New York Herald Tribune and New York Daily News, came in 1967. This year he is on leave-of-absence to work toward a Ph.D. at the University of Texas.
Oscar Hoffmeyer became publications supervisor in 1979. He had been a journalism professor and public relations officer at Louisiana [Baptist] College.
Two of Cheavens’ former students, Ed Kelton and Michael Stricklin, are teaching with one-year contracts. Kelton is working on a master’s degree in graphics from Syracuse; Stricklin’s graduate work is in newspaper technology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Everyone on the journalism faculty, in fact, is a Baylor graduate.
The only thing different about the Lariat newsroom is that instead of being the center of activity- the “club room” for journalism students-it’s a quiet place with a handful of Lariat staffers working diligently on tomorrow’s paper.
The walk to the press is different- the press is in a new building over by the science building- but then Lariat staffers don’t spend as much time at the press as they used to. For those of us who sometimes spent the entire night at the press, this is hard to comprehend. How can you learn to be a newsman-or woman- if you’re not there to read the galleys and the page proofs, maybe even hand-set a headline yourself?
But the equipment at the press is practically irrelevant to the training of a journalist in 1972, for technological innovation is revolutionizing American newspapers, and this is only one of several developments that are reshaping the fiber of journalism.
If the Lariat is different in 1972 from 1962, so is Baylor and so is the world.
(Ella Prichard had not been back on the Baylor campus except for Homecoming since her term as Lariat editor ended in January, 1963. Last September she came back for two days. She stayed in Russell Hall, went to journalism classes and a weekly Lariat staff meeting, and visited with students, administration members, and faculty members. It was a cram course as she sought to fill in the gaps of nine years — both in what was happening to journalism professionally and at Baylor. These are some of her observations, reinforced by correspondence and tele¬ phone conversations with Baylor people both on and off the campus .)
Those who are reaching adulthood now find journalism most important in relation to the rapid changes in American society. And they are entering journalism schools in record numbers.
“Next to law, journalism attracts more recruits than any other university department,” John Teb- gel reported in Saturday Review. “These students have discovered that the media are the best means to reach the minds and hearts of people. This movement into journalism comes at a time when technological change is rapidly altering the face of the industry, requiring more and more professional training techniques.”
What are the changes in newspaper technology?
One is the offset press, which transfers ink to paper from a photographic plate rather than from the traditional raised type. The American Press now estimates that by 1981 seventy-four percent of American newspaper publishers will be using offset printing.
Another is “cold type,” which uses photographic methods rather than the hot metal Linotype to produce print-outs of copy.
Computers now hyphenate words and make the margins of the columns come out even on many newspapers. It is predicted that by 1980 metropolitan newspapers will be fully computerized.
Video display terminals utilizing a cathode ray tube (CRT for short] are the newest. This is a television screen with a typewriter-like keyboard with which deskmen edit news copy and direct its distribution.
The Associated Press is using CRTs in some of its branch offices, and United Press International has recently installed CRTs in its New York office.
Newsmen and Baylor faculty members agree that within two years journalism graduates will need to know how to operate a CRT to work for the wire services. Metropolitan newspapers will need CRT-trained journalists in five to eight years.
By the end of the decade, at the latest, a reporter will type his story into a CRT. From there it will go to a computer memory bank. Then the editor can call it up and send it to the phototypesetter.
Within ten years newspaper presses may be eliminated completely with the product going right into the subscriber’s home, utilizing the airwaves for transmission purposes and electrostatic or other processes for printing on the receiving end.
A recent advertisement placed by McGraw-Hill began, “By 1979, give or take a year, newspapers, The future of journalism has some Buck Rogers overtones. and perhaps magazines, too, will be printed in your living room.”
All of this promises more change ahead. As the traditional “back shop” jobs are eliminated by technology, it appears likely that eventually news¬ paper reporters and editors, using computers, will assume much responsibility for the mechanics of publishing.
But technology is simply something else today’s journalist has to learn. To the students attracted to journalism by a crusader’s zeal, technology is a tool to say what they have to say. And they are saying it in a different way.
Instead of writing the traditional “who, what, when, where, why” news story, young journalists frequently are more descriptive as they tell us about cultural changes, new life styles, and counter-cultures that we’ve had no personal contact with and find hard to accept. It is easier to blame the media for these changes we can’t comprehend.
Marsh, who has an illustrious professional newspaper background, explains, “Everyone from Spiro Agnew to the Black Panthers criticizes journalists. The main reason is that the journalist is becoming more important. People have fantastic amounts of information thrown at them. They want journalists to edit to fit their desires. In addition, it’s becoming more important for journalists to see to it that they get what they really need.”
It’s the journalist who is the generalist in a world of specialists, McHam says, and it’s the journalist who is going to have to break down this barrage of information so we can use it to “salvage some order in our lives.”
Marsh pointed this out in explaining why he left New York to teach.
I had the choice of writing for the newspaper with the biggest circulation in America two million — the New York Daily News or of teaching a few hundred journalism students. I decided to leave the News and come to Baylor because I think the next generation of journalists will have more to do with holding this country together, with developing a new kind of world leadership than anyone else,” he said.
At Baylor the Lariat plays a vitally important part in training journalists. As part of the journalism department, it is governed by the Board of Publication, a group of elected student representatives and presidentially appointed faculty and administrative members.
Official editorial policies for the Lariat were adopted by the board in 1963, and they are the governing principles for the newspaper today. In¬ herent in the policies are the basic problems facing the student newspaper. The opening statement says: “The Baylor Lariat is a college newspaper produced by college journalists about the college community for the college readership. It is owned and published by Baylor University.”
The editorial policies continue: The number one purpose of the Lariat is “to serve as a laboratory for journalism students … an educational instrument of the Baylor journalism department. Emphasis is to be placed on student responsibility in carrying out the purposes and policies of the Lariat.”
This student responsibility is seen to be an essential part of the training of future newsmen.
Marsh said, “It’s as essential as a chemistry lab to the chemistry student. The immediate prospect of contributing to a publication gives both a motivation and a sense of responsibility to the student.”
Henry Holcomb, award-winning reporter for The Houston Post, said the Lariat was the most significant part of his preparation at Baylor. He said he was thrown into countless real-life situations where he got “the type of supervision a young reporter needs but seldom gets on a newspaper… enough freedom to make mistakes and to grow but enough supervision to profit from these mistakes and this experimentation.”
Mrs. Cheavens wrote of her husband’s views, “He wanted the Lariat to be a sound teaching-learning experience and at the same time be as good a paper as possible so far as serving the student community was concerned.”
In other words, first the Lariat is the laboratory where apprentice newsmen put theory into practice. This is why Cheavens wanted “as good a paper as possible.” Apprentices are not going to publish the perfect paper, but in order to learn they must assume the responsibility for that paper.
Journalism students, like no others on the cam-pus, expose themselves their abilities and their limitations-to the entire campus day after day. In most departments no one but the professor ever sees a student’s work. In the performing arts the daily work is viewed by others in the classroom or department, and occasionally after much rehearsal a performance is presented that is open to the public. But only at the Lariat does the student “perform” every day, with new material every day, with no faculty member sitting in judgment (but always there as counsel). with a deadline over his head that eliminates practice runs.
Any student given this kind of responsibility coupled with the pressure of a deadline is going to make mistakes, but Marsh says this experience is important to the students.
“If they see the anger, disappointment, harm that a mistake causes in the campus publication— where everyone knows and understands that what is written comes from the hand of neophytes— then the public and journalism itself are better protected when the somewhat scarred student journalist receives his degree and goes out into professional life,” he said.
Related to this problem of the public nature of the journalist’s “laboratory” is a second problem:
The Lariat is about the college community for the college readership. It is written by students for students about their community. And only a Baylor student can have the proper perspective for reading the Lariat.
Sometimes news stories are printed in the Lariat that, while entirely accurate, report events or situations that make uncomfortable those of us who remember Baylor enveloped in a rosy haze of nostalgia.
We don’t want to know that some current students are the aggressors or victims of crime.
We don’t want to know that some current students demonstrate for and support drastic social and governmental reforms.
We don’t want to know that some current students are demanding removal of any kind of personal conduct or appearance regulations.
We especially don’t want to know that some current students are much more liberal in their views on religion, politics, and morality than we are.
When the campus newspaper reports these disturbing changes at a place we think of as changeless, we don’t like it and we get angry at the medium that tells us about it.
Obviously, this situation is not unique to Baylor.
In large part this same reaction on the part of readers who don’t understand the changes they’re reading about has motivated the current rash of attacks on all the nation’s mass media. Baylor, like the mass media, is subjected regularly to demands for control, if not censorship.
After all, the Lariat may be produced by college journalists for the college readership, but it is “owned and published by Baylor University,” which is another problem.
Angus McSwain, dean of the law school and a member of the Board of Publications for ten years, stated an administration view. He said, “I believe that freedom of the press is in general the freedom of the publisher, and that it is the publisher who must determine the policies for publication.”
The editorial policies state that “The Lariat should maintain a general overall loyalty to the interests of the university and its students …. Editorial matter should avoid creating problems and propagating controversy when to do so would be destructive to the interests of the university or its students.”
In a student’s perspective the best interests of the university sometimes seem to lie more with the interests of the trustees, the Baptist General Convention of Texas and alumni than with the students’ interests.
When a student editor feels this way, he may well launch an editorial attack.
Though these attacks tend to make alumni wince. McSwain said he thought it was clear that the editorial policies do not “prohibit absolutely any criticism of the university.
Self-criticism is in general a healthy thing for any institution, and a loyalty to the interests of the university and its students is not inconsistent with some degree of criticism. This sub-paragraph of the policies is intended to prohibit editorial matter which goes beyond such criticism and is disruptive to the university and its students.”
This brings us back to responsibilities. As long as the student newspaper recognizes its responsibilities-to be objective, accurate and fair—tem-perate criticism will be permitted.
Another reason for allowing the Lariat freedom is the very real possibility of “underground” news-papers. They emerge from time to time at all college campuses, including Baylor, and frequently are anonymous, libelous, obscene and even sub-versive. None has lasted long at Baylor because students have not supported them. But it is a fact that where campus newspapers are censored, the “underground” press flourishes.
The Lariat, as an uncensored newspaper, gives reporters the opportunity to dig beneath the surface to ferret out facts. Today they’re questioning administration members; in a few years it will be a mayor, a congressman, a corporation presi-dent, a union boss, a police chief who will come under scrutiny of journalists’ attempts to give their readership enough facts to enable them to decide for themselves what the truth is.
The one person responsible for the editorial content of the Lariat has traditionally been the editor, elected for a one-semester term by the Board of Publications. Last November journalism faculty and students recommended that the editorship be replaced by a three-man editorial board. The Board of Publications accepted the recommendation and it is being tested this spring.
McSwain said the criteria he used in voting for an editor were “first, technical capability, which would include training, experience and aptitude: second, a quality of leadership and acceptance by those with whom he would work; and third, a responsible attitude toward the university and its students.”
Basically the Lariat operates like a professional newspaper. Hoffmeyer is in the newsroom or nearby from about the time the staff goes to work after lunch until the page proofs come off the press, usually about 1 a.m.
Hoffmeyer said he regarded his relation to the Lariat editor as a publisher-editor relationship. He said he is available for counsel and reads everything in the Lariat before the paper is printed.
“There is no censorship,” he emphasized. “I read to make sure of accuracy and possible libel. If I find wording that I have a question about, then I call the editor, and we discuss that. I may ask him to double-check it. I have never had a problem working such things out with the editor.”
A major problem for the Lariat in recent years has been the space limitations. With more journalism students and a much larger student body, the Lariat has less editorial space today than ten years ago.
The major reason is cost. Marvin Goebel, director of the Baylor Press, said he has seen student wages for operating the press go from seventy-five cents an hour to a record $2.50 an hour this year.
Even so, advertising sales may more than pay the Lariat’s printing costs. Hoffmeyer said that in October, 1971, the Lariat contained $4,610.10 of advertising, and printing costs were $3,764.80 or $50.87 per page. Under present accounting methods, however, Lariat staff salaries ($1,653 in October) are listed as an operating expense rather than as student aid or laboratory assistantships. The Lariat receives no subscription income from its campus readers.
While operating have increased, the Lariat budget has been reduced from $68,394 in 1969-70 to $50,763 for the current year. The figures reflect a cut from five to four Lariats a week made at President McCall’s request.
McHam, who was Lariat supervisor from 1961 to 1969, said, “We are so tied down by antiquated press facilities (1927 flat bed press and 1947 Linotype machine) that we are spending as much money for four pages a day as we could get for eight pages were we to modernize. This is so basic that it has an effect on the ‘balance’ in the Lariat.
Many types of stories cannot be used because of lack of space. That makes the controversial stories emerge, which gives people the feeling the Lariat is anti-everything.”
To remedy this the journalism faculty and the administration have agreed to a trial next year of a new arrangement. An eight-page Lariat will be printed on a commercial offset press in Waco. In February the Lariat began printing Friday editions off-campus in preparation for the changeover next fall.
Still a decision must be made whether to buy or lease phototypesetters, even computers and CRTs, to allow journalism students to prepare the Lariat “dummy” for offset printing in Waco.
In spite of the problems editorial and technical-the department has made slow but steady growth, both in the number of students and their quality. McSwain said he found steady improvement in the technical quality of the Lariat over the past ten years and that more qualified students were applying for the editorship.
Holcomb said, “The Lariat is the most responsible student newspaper in this part of the world. I know. I’ve read most of the others frequently and I’ve visited a lot of the campuses as a guest lecturer on behalf of the Houston Post. With all the problems, Baylor has the best journalism program in Texas.”
Primarily Baylor journalism trains newspaper reporters and editors. This was the basis of the first journalism course offered—when Dr. Dorothy Scarborough of the English department taught “News Writing” in 1917—and it continues to be the core of the curriculum.
In 1922, Dr. C. D. Johnson arrived at Baylor, and five years later a full-fledged journalism department was created with eleven courses and Johnson as director. Two years later, when Frank F. Burkhalter was named chairman of the department, there were twenty journalism courses. Since then the curriculum has changed only slightly.
Great strides were made in the department under Cheavens’ leadership. Cheavens—son of missionaries to Mexico, Baylor graduate, long-time chief of The Associated Press capitol bureau in Austin— came to Baylor in 1961 on a one-year leave of absence from AP to be consultant for the journalism department and public relations office, and he never left. A year later President McCall named him journalism chairman and public relations director for Baylor.
When Cheavens arrived, the department had a one-man faculty, and few recent Baylor graduates were working on newspapers. When he died, there was a full-time faculty of five and two excellent parttime instructors, Mrs. Dave Campbell and Tommie Suits.
“He was immensely proud of the end results of his years at Baylor-young people in responsible, challenging and contributing roles,” Mrs. Cheavens wrote. “He was very pleased that the publishing community, especially in Texas, wanted Baylor graduates.”
Cheavens was able to use his influence to get his students jobs long before he had produced enough graduates to alter the reputation of the department, and he was able to attract top flight newsmen to the faculty.
As far as he could determine, no other journalism departments, except at Syracuse University, were offering a religious journalism sequence, and that one was a graduate program. Thus he created and taught the religious journalism courses both to prepare journalists for the religious press and to teach religion students how to use the media.
In 1968 a former Lariat editor, Paul Harral, now assistant director of United Press International radio news in Chicago, wrote Cheavens: “Perhaps more important than adequate training, I, person-ally, and Baylor graduates as a group have received an ideal of ethical and honest reporting I find sadly lacking in many of the professionals I meet.”
Vaughan is building now on the foundation Cheavens laid. A year ago a Journalism Student Council was formed, and its five elected members have a vote at department faculty meetings. Though the final decision concerning the Lariat editorial board and modern printing equipment cannot be predicted, progress is being made there.
The old curriculum was overhauled in the fall to better allow faculty members to teach their specialties and to lay the groundwork for accreditation.
The new curriculum creates sequences, whereby a student chooses a specialty such as news-editorial, photojournalism, journalism education or religious journalism and works out a course study with his faculty advisor that will prepare him for a specific journalism vocation. The American Council on Education for Journalism, the national accrediting organization, evaluates each sequence separately; it does not accredit departments.
Vaughan said Baylor will be seeking news-editorial accreditation in the near future.
The publicity, the scholarships and awards available to a journalism department with accreditation will help Baylor attract top student journa-lists, but the students who already come to Baylor are part of what gives Baylor journalists their unique quality.
They bring the strong religious streak of their Baptist backgrounds to the department, and some of the most outstanding students have been the children of men in church-related professions or students with a commitment to Christian service.
Marsh said he was attracted to teach at Baylor because of the “strong moral fiber” of its students, and McHam says that’s one reason he stays.
“Journalism has to deal with the world as it is and it must prove itself daily before the court of public opinion, Marsh wrote in 1966. “And so journalism at Baylor for me combined idealism with realism. To Baylor’s motto of ‘For God-For Country’-I could add ‘For Truth.'”
Many Baylor graduates have found Marsh’s words true, and they have made a place for themselves in the profession. This is the only accurate way to judge the Lariat and the journalism depart-ment—to look at its alumni.
There are the Lariat editors of the last ten years: Bill Hartman, editor and publisher, Beaumont News-Enterprise; Ella Wall Prichard, housewife: Ray Hubener, foreign free-lance work; Tommy West,Cincinnati Enquirer; Ed DeLong, defense department and space for UPI, Washington; Paul Harral, UPI radio, Chicago; Tommy Miller, UPI, San Francisco; Ed Kelton, journalism instructor, Baylor; Tom Kennedy, The Houston Post; Louis Moore, religion editor, The Houston Chronicle; Tom Belden, UPI, Richmond; Willie White, Baylor ministerial student; Don Turner, Dallas Seminary.
Many of the graduates are teachers of journalism in colleges and high schools. Many are in educational or religious public relations service.
Many own or work for small community weekly or daily newspapers, the vast world-girding wire ser-vices, the religious press, the magazines, or the big-city newspapers. They are in advertising, pub-lishing, photography, radio, television-all areas of mass communications.
Holcomb said, “UPI put Paul Harral in charge of its Colorado-Wyoming bureau when he was only 24 or 25. Ed DeLong was chief of UPI’s bureau at the space center when he was about the same age. John Pearce was covering the Treasury Department for The Associated Press when he was 25 or 26. On the Apollo 8 mission, the first flight to the moon. Ed DeLong was UPI’s top writer. I was one of five pool reporters on the recovery ship (by far the youngest member of the pool that included reporters from UPI, the New York Times and the chain that owns the Miami Herald). Also there were at least six others I can recall now … who were representing major newspapers at the Space Center. Even if you have a lot of talent, you generally don’t get assignments like that in your mid-twenties unless you have an abnormally strong sense of ethics and responsibility.”
These graduates-and literally hundreds of others like them-give Baylor journalism the credit.
“I owe what I am and where I am to the Baylor Department of Journalism,” Harral wrote Cheavens. “And that is something that neither I nor a number of other graduates will soon forget.”
We don’t forget that, but we do forget––especially if we’re outside the profession ––that journalism cannot maintain a status quo. Because it is the recorder of change, it is always changing.
As a journalism brochure says, “The question is no longer ‘Is the world going to change?’ but ‘Who is going to change it and how?’ As a Christian university Baylor recognizes the importance of providing communications leadership that will change the world—for the better.”
