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Personal sketch |
I am a professor of journalism in the School of Mass Communication, Loyola University New Orleans. During the 2006-2007 academic year, I am also serving as interim dean of the university's new College of Social Sciences.
I have taught at Loyola since 1981, when I was named chair. I left the chairmanship in 1994, and since then I've devoted myself to teaching and research.
I'm associate director of Loyola University's summer program in Mexico City and, as part of that program, I teach the course Mexican Media System.
Loyola students on the campus of the Universidad Iberoamericana |
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I did my undergraduate work at Marquette University, where I earned a B.S. in English (1958). My M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1968), both from Southern Illinois University, are in journalism
Following my graduation from
Marquette, I spent three years in the U.S. Army, in the Army
Security Agency (1959-62), with tours on 
Okinawa
and at White Sands Missile Range, and on discharge I signed up
with the U.S. Army Reserve (1962-70) and served active duty stints
as a communications security officer at ASA headquarters in Arlington,
VA, and as a public information officer at Edgewood Arsenal,
MD. I resigned my commission as a captain when Richard Nixon
ordered the bombing of Cambodia.
On my discharge from the regular
Army, I was fortunate to get a job with United
Press Inte
rnational, as a newsman in the
National Broadcast News Department in Chicago (1962-64). We wrote
newscasts for client radio and television stations across the
country, and the major stories during my time on that desk were
integration in the South, the Cuban missile crisis, and the first
incursions into Viet Nam. One horrible day, I helped to tell
the story of the assassination of President
Kennedy. Another ex-Unipresser wrote years later that UPI
"was held together with the journalistic equivalent of Scotch
tape and baling wire, offered rock-bottom wages for round-the-clock
work, was persistently understaffed, constantly chaotic, proudly
perverse and--for most who worked there--probably the most fun
they ever had." I'm one of those; it was the most fun I
ever had. I worked occasionally as a stringer for UPI's Marion,
IL, bureau while I was in graduate school, and after completing
my doctorate I took another turn on the broadcast desk in Chicago.
That was during the tumultuous Democratic National Convention
summer of 1968.
When I left UPI to go to graduate school, I planned to spend a year studying for a master's degree, then write television documentaries. But as I neared completion of the degree, the job I wanted wasn't available, and I realized I enjoyed graduate study, so I stayed on for another three years and turned my sights toward a university career. My first university teaching job was as a part-time instructor in the Department of Management, Southern Illinois University (1967-68), where I taught courses in business writing and business letter writing while I wrote my dissertation.
In the fall of 1968 I went
back to Marquette as a 
full-time
faculty member in the College of Journalism (1968-80), and there
I headed the radio-tv sequence and served as director of graduate
studies (1977-79).
Marquette University's Johnston Hall, in which I studied English as an undergraduate and taught journalism as a faculty member |
I left Marquette in 1980 to head the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at New Mexico State University and serve as director of the university's Center for Broadcasting and International Communications, and the following year I came to Loyola as chair of the Department of Communications (1981-94).
I've also lectured at the University of Wisconsin Center - Waukesha (1973-74), and while I was in the Army I moonlighted for a time teaching English composition at the U.S. Army Education Center, Machinato, Okinawa (1960-61). I've lectured at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City (1992, 1993, 1994) as part of a faculty exchange agreement.
I regularly teach undergraduate courses in History of Journalism and Ethics of Mass Communications, Introduction to Mass Communications, Communications Writing and Beginning Reporting. On the graduate level I teach Mass Communications History and Mass Communications Ethics. In recent semesters I've taught graduate seminars on the literature of mass communications and on the freedom of press.
A few
years ago I teamed up with Prof. John Vivian of Winona State
University to write the textbook News:Reporting
and Writing (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1996). John is
an old friend with whom I taught at Marquette and New Mexico
State University and author of the widely used introductory text
book, The Media of
Mass Communication, , now in its sixth edition.
My first book was the biography Hugh Gaine: A Colonial Printer-Editor's Odyssey to Loyalism (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972). |
I've also written Writing Guide for Technical Publications (Edgewood Arsenal Special Publication 400-25, 1969); "The Press and Society," a supplement to the Chicago Tribune Weekly Report (1973); and numerous articles, reviews, and research reports which have appeared in such publications as American Journalism, Journalism Quarterly, Journalism History, Journal of Broadcasting, Grassroots Editor, and Milwaukee County Historical Society Messenger. I've contributed to the "American Newspaper Journalists" volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography and to the Biographical Dictionary of American Journalism. Most recently, I published an articleon Ralph Waldo Tyler, the only African-American to be accredited as a war correspondent in World War I in Journalism History. I've listed my publications on another page. At the moment, I'm conducting research with the aim of writing a book about the Chicago Tribune's "In the Wake of the News" column and the men who have written it, including Ring Lardner, shown here at about the time he conducted the column, from 1913 to 1919.
During the years I've been teaching I've tried to keep one foot in the world of professional journalism. While at Marquette I worked during summers and on many weekends during the school year as a reporter and newscaster for WISN-AM/FM, Milwaukee (1972-1977). I was writer, moderator and producer of "Milwaukee Media Review," aired on WISN-TV, (1972-73); writer and moderator of "Marquette on Camera," also on WISN-TV (1977-80); and writer and moderator of "Milwaukee: Behind the Headlines," broadcast by the PBS outlet WMVS-TV (1976-80). A special program in the latter series, "Anatomy of a Newscast," won a 1980 Clarion Award from Women in Communications, Inc., for me and producer Philip Byrd,now producer/director of Brandenburg Productions, Inc. Since 1987 I've been host of the weekly news-in-review program "Informed Sources," broadcast on WYES-TV, New Orleans.
Errol Laborde, producer and regular panelist, and I posed for this shot on the set of "Informed Sources." |
I've free-lanced articles to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, the now-defunct Kansas City-St. Joseph Register, and Travel Counsellor Magazine. I contribute an occasional observation to the muckraking Internet newspaper Putnam Pit.
I have been a member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication; Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, whose national Historic Sites Committee I chaired (1980-85); and the American Journalism Historians Association, which I have served as a member of the editorial board and referee of American Journalism. I am also a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, national journalism and mass communications honorary society (and moderator of the Loyola chapter); Sigma Tau Delta, national English honorary society; Sigma Delta Pi, national Spanish honorary society; and Phi Kappa Phi, national scholastic honorary society. I'm a past president (1984-85) of the Press Club of New Orleans, and in 2001 the Press Club honored me with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
I'm a former member of the board of directors of the Center for Nonprofit Resources in New Orleans. I've also been a member of the marketing committee of Associated Catholic Charities. I have served the local United Way as a member of its Marketing and Public Relations Cabinet, as communications liaison to the coordinating council of the Community Resources Division and as a member of the Impact Grant Committee. In 1998, the United Way presented me its Peter A. Mayer Award for outstanding communications support.
I'm married to the former Kathleen Condon. We have five children: Abigail. Kate, Patrick, Bobby and Mary. All are Loyola graduates.
