Pintak and Shors - "in the news" WSU Magazine

Paper Cuts - Last winter Frank Blethen, CEO and fourth generation owner of The Seattle Times, stood in front of Washington State University’s graduating class and warned of an end to a free press. The students may have been hoping for a blustery send-off. Instead they heard a call to arms.

“America is in crisis,” he told them, describing an underfunded and collapsing newspaper journalism business. Newspapers play a crucial role in a democracy, he told them; they report on government, public issues, and community life.

Murrow Interview by Founding Dean, Lawrence Pintak

(October '09 Connect, continued) Edward R. Murrow College of Communication Founding Dean Lawrence Pintak comes to Washington State University with an extensive background as a journalist and educator in the Middle East. He covered the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the rise of Hezbollah and the birth of suicide bombing.

He most recently headed the journalism center at American University in Cairo.

Dr. Pintak is dedicated to promoting challenging journalism in Murrow's tradition.

Murrow students' work for The Spokesman-Review

College students’ cheap fix. Increasing number using ADHD drug to stay alert. Trina Jones, Katie Berger And Alexandra Schwappach Special to The Spokesman-Review.

By her sophomore year of college, Kaley, a Washington State University student, routinely popped the prescription drug Adderall to help her study.

The 20-year-old has never had a prescription for the

stimulant, but she found it easy to obtain from friends. She first swallowed pills, then began “railing,” or snorting, it at parties. Kaley, one of several students who agreed to speak on the condition their last names not be printed, used Adderall to stay up for days at a time studying for exams or finishing her homework. At parties, she could drink more alcohol without feeling intoxicated.

Honoring 30 years as a Broadcast Professor

Former students of Glenn A Johnson have provided seed money and their endorsement of an appeal to endow a professorship on behalf of Glenn in recognition of his 30 years of service to the Murrow College and as a broadcast figurehead for WSU. Their letter of appeal follows.

If you're receiving this letter, you likely know the major impact that Washington State University professor Glenn Johnson has had on the world of broadcasting, the Edward

R. Murrow College of Communications and, quite possibly, your own life.

He's the voice of the Cougars, filling Friel Court and Martin Stadium with enthusiasm, "And that's another Cougar first down!"  He's also the Mayor of Pullman, Washington. And perhaps he gave you, or someone you care about, the chance to turn a WSU communications degree into a dream career.

Tan earns national communication honor

PULLMAN – WSU Diversity Faculty Fellow Alex Tan recently received the President’s Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). He was honored for his leadership, particularly during the group’s three-year strategic planning process.

“When it came time to start the process, we turned to Alex, a former president of AEJMC, to help lead our members through it,” said Barbara B. Hines, association president. Tan chaired the AEJMC Strategic Planning Team as well as the AEJMC Strategic Plan Implementation Committee.

Former Ambassador, Veteran Journalist to Offer Views on Middle East Issues

SEATTLE, Wash. – Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and veteran Middle East journalist Lawrence Pintak will offer their collective insights into the challenges facing our nation in that critical region of the world in Seattle next week as part of presentation sponsored by the Seattle City Club, Washington State University and the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle.

Crocker, who retired recently after 37 years as a career

ambassador with the U.S. Foreign Service, and Pintak, newly named founding dean of WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, are expected to explore a variety of Middle East issues, including U.S. efforts to help Iraqis build a stable and prosperous country; whether there are signs of progress towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; and what is likely to be the result of recent elections in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bill Stanley retires after forty years

Bill Stanley (Communications ’69) retired from KSPS Public Television in Spokane August 31, 2009 after four decades of serving the PBS audience in the U.S. and Canada.

Stanley joined KSPS in 1969 as a producer-director for instructional programming.  Through the seventies he wore many hats including that of Sports Director.  He produced and did play-by-play announcing for hundreds of high school and college football, basketball, wrestling and baseball games.  He did the play-by-play for Cougar basketball on television from 1975 – 1978.  Stanley traveled with George Raveling’s Cougs to Europe in 1977. Upon returning, he produced a half hour documentary on their unique trip.

‘60 Minutes’ creator Don Hewitt has died

Journalism has lost another giant. CBS News has lost another icon. And the Murrow College has lost another friend. The passing of Don Hewitt, our 2008 Murrow Award winner, so soon after the death of Walter Cronkite, is another sad reminder that a glorious era in television news has truly come to an end. Another link to our College’s namesake, Edward R. Murrow, has been lost.

Most famous for creating 60 Minutes, Hewitt began his television career as the young director of Murrow’s See It Now, television’s first news magazine.

He went on to direct The CBS Evening News and, ultimately, to create what has become the most successful TV magazine show in history.

Describing what makes great television during the 2008 Murrow Symposium, he told several of our faculty, “The bottom line: Just tell me the story.”

Fade to black.

Lawrence Pintak
Founding Dean

Dean Pintak on blogging in the Arab world:

What is a journalist? In Western media circles these days, the boundaries are blurring between online newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor and Guardian.co.uk, “blogs” such as HuffingtonPost.com, YouTube’s “citizen journalism,” and the rantings of political attack-dogs of all political stripes. Sure, HuffPost has a White House press pass, but beyond that, it’s all semantics, right?

Not so in the Middle East. Here, the distinction can be a matter of life and death. Lately, well-meaning Western journalism rights groups have been invoking “freedom of the press” to defend Arab and Iranian online activists who have been jailed or harassed by the authorities. By doing so, they are undermining journalism.

Television Fledgling Keeps it Real

THE phone rang late on a summer Sunday morning, and the request was urgent: Can you get to the set of “Top Chef” in an hour?

It was the call that Doneen Arquines had been awaiting since she finished a job as a production assistant on the show’s

first season eight months earlier. Since then she had moved on to other shows, adding an associate producer title to her résumé, all the while hoping to move back to “Top Chef” in a more senior position.

An Open Letter to CBS News

Dear Mr. McManus:

On behalf of the faculty and staff of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, I would like to express our sadness at the passing of Walter Cronkite and extend our sympathies to the Cronkite family and those closest to him at CBS News.

In 1998, then Murrow School Director Dr. Alex Tan presented Mr. Cronkite with the Washington State University Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, one of the mountain of such honors he so deservedly received over his career. Other CBS luminaries who have received the award include Sir Howard Stringer, Daniel Schorr, Don Hewitt and, this year, Bob Schieffer.

The Next Twitter?

Facebook is for photos of the kids, Twitter for blurting out pearls of marketing wisdom to his 613 followers, Linkedin for electronic schmoozing with potential business partners, Myspace for teenagers and rock bands.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff understands as well as anybody what each of the Big Four social networking sites means to him. It’s whoever can figure out a way to combine all these

bookmarks into one place, so he’s not leaping from one cyberspace hub to the next; whoever can help him root out new groups of potential clients for Webtrends, the Portland, Ore.,-based company at which he works as vice president of marketing — that person may have discovered the next big thing in social networking, while at the same time relegating some current online behemoth into Friendster oblivion (remember Friendster?)

Sexual violence prevention program targets WSU freshmen

A pair of WSU researchers are hoping for a little change.

The U.S. Department of Education is supporting a WSU campaign against sexual violence with a $235,000 check.

"The grant's going to fund two years of a sexual assault prevention campaign, that's going to consist of newsletters that will be delivered to freshman on campus," said College of Communication Assistant Professor Stacey Hust.

Grant Will Empower WSU Campus Campaign Against Sexual Assault

The United States Department of Education has awarded $235,000 to support an ongoing media campaign intended to empower students to prevent and respond appropriately to sexual violence at Washington State University.

Stacey Hust, assistant professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, and Paula M. Adams,

Communication Coordinator at WSU's Health and Wellness Services (HWS), will conduct field experiments during the next two years to explore the effectiveness of two communication strategies, social norms and entertainment education, in a media campaign to reduce sexual violence among WSU students.

Association for Women in Communications Recognizes WSU chapter as Outstanding

The Washington State University chapter of The Association for Women in Communications has been named the AWC Outstanding Chapter in the Nation for 2009 for substantially increasing its activities and membership.

The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication chapter was selected for the recognition from more than 30 student chapters. It is the 11th national AWC award received by the WSU chapter in the past 10 years.

Murrow College Budget News - All Degree Programs Preserved; Multimedia Opportunities to Increase

Dear students, faculty, staff, and friends—

By now you may have heard some information about Washington State University’s budget cut plan, developed in response to the legislature’s 21.53% reduction in our funding for the next biennium.  More information is available at :  http://budget-committee.wsu.edu/. I would like to take this opportunity to give you some specific information about how the cut will affect the Murrow College.

Cuts across colleges and administrative areas have been as high as 30%, with the university forced to eliminate some programs and 370 jobs. Our College has been comparatively fortunate.

We have been asked to prepare for a cut of $160,000. In addition, we have been asked to prepare for a parallel cut to the University’s public television unit, which we are in the process of adopting. This amounts to a reduction of approximately $25,000 to that area.  Our planned response to these cuts is to eliminate a funded but not yet filled external relations staff position in the dean’s office and two faculty positions we have kept vacant in anticipation of this situation. We also must eliminate half of a staff position in the public television area.