Posts filed under ‘College of Communications’
Ganim Wins Pulitzer for Sandusky Coverage
If you’ve been following the Sandusky scandal, I’m sure you’ve noticed the tenacious reporting of Sara Ganim ’08, whose March story first alerted the public that Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71 MEd H&HD was being investigated by a grand jury, and who was at the forefront of the coverage when the scandal became national news in November. She was honored Monday afternoon with journalism’s highest prize, the Pulitzer.
The citation, for local reporting, reads like this: “Awarded to Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg, Penn., for courageously revealing and adeptly covering the explosive Penn State sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky.”
“This is definitely a win for the whole newsroom,” Ganim says in this video, which is upside-down. “For everybody standing here. And more important, I think it’s important for everyone in every newsroom just like ours for every newsroom across the country. because better than any award., the most rewarding thing in this whole process is people telling me this story and our coverage has changed their minds about local reporting.”
Ganim, who’s 24 years old and one of the youngest Pulitzer winners, is one of a very small group of Penn Staters who have been so honored:
Norman C. Miller ’56 of the Wall Street Journal won the 1964 prize for local, general, or spot news reporting for a “comprehensive account of a multi-million dollar vegetable oil swindle in New Jersey.”
Rod Nordland ’72 was part of a team from The Philadelphia Inquirer that won the 1983 prize for local, general, or spot news for coverage of the Three Mile Island accident.
Janet Day ’82 was part of a team at The Denver Post that won the 2000 prize for breaking news for coverage of the Columbine shootings.
Novelist Richard Russo, who taught at Penn State Altoona, won the 2002 prize in fiction for Empire Falls, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Theodore Roethke taught at Penn State from 1936–1943. Additionally, archivist Paul Dzyak ’92 tells us, Donald Bartlett, half of a dynamic investigative duo with James Steele, briefly attended Penn State. Bartlett and Steele won the 1989 Pulitzer for national reporting for an investigation into the 1986 Tax Reform Act. And Mark E. Neely Jr., McCabe-Greer Professor of American Civil War History, won the 1992 prize for history for The Fate of Liberty.
Thanks to Dzyak and Vicki Fong ’81, manager of public relations for the College of the Liberal Arts, for helping to compile this list. If you know of anyone we missed, please let us know in the comments or at our Facebook page.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
P.S. Additionally, Diane Ackerman ’70 was a finalist for the Pulitzer in non-fiction for One Hundred Names for Love, which we excerpted in our July/August issue.
A Heartfelt Goodbye
This public information photo shows some of the 12,000 attendees at Joe Paterno's memorial service at the Bryce Jordan Center.
Father Matthew Laffey of the Penn State Catholic Center set the tone—and provided a broad outline of Joe Paterno’s life—in his opening prayer. “Thank you for this man. … How fortunate this corner of your kingdom has been.”
The details came slowly over the next two hours Thursday afternoon, as speakers at A Memorial for Joe painted pictures of the man who helped to build—and became largely synonymous with—Penn State.
We met the competitive Joe. “The bigger the game, the quieter he was in practice,” said Todd Blackledge, quarterback of the 1982 national championship team. “But the gleam in his eyes told the story.”
The literary Joe, who never called Susan Welch, dean of the College of the Liberal Arts, anything other than “Dean,” who donated millions of dollars to the library, and who clearly passed that love of literature on to his son. Here’s who Jay Paterno quoted in his closing eulogy: Sophocles, William Blatty, U2, John Adams, John Ruskin, Tennessee Williams, Martin Luther King Jr., and Arthur Ashe.
The funny Joe, so quick with a one-liner, who told Jimmy Cefalo’s mother on a recruiting visit, “Your pasta is better than Mrs. Cappelletti’s.” (more…)
A Timely Class in Journalism Ethics
From our intern, Emily Kaplan:
Over the weekend, a friend of mine tweeted: Boy, what I would do to sit in on a journalism ethics class at Penn State this week.
I am fortunate to be enrolled in that course this semester—COMM 409: News Media Ethics, a section taught by Malcolm Moran, a veteran journalist and head of Penn State’s John Curley Center for Sports Journalism.
My friend was right—Tuesday’s lesson was never more relevant. When I walked in, I had pretty good feeling we wouldn’t be discussing the assigned reading on the syllabus. Not after a weekend where dubious reporting and social media gone wild resulted in an announcement that the most recognizable face of this university had died—when in fact, he was still alive.
“There’s nothing more important to be right about than if an important figure is alive or not,” Moran said. “Nothing.”
So who better to be a guest lecturer than Mark Viera ’09? He’s the New York Times reporter who dispelled reports that Joe Paterno had passed away Saturday night by simply asking a family spokesman whether the rumors were true.
The class had a meta feel. Moran asked Viera what lessons from the course he has applied to his reporting—and what lessons couldn’t be taught in the classroom. Moran also pointed out the seat that Viera occupied just a few semesters ago. The girl sitting there now has some big shoes to fill. Viera, 24, has been one of the Times’ lead journalists in Penn State coverage over the past two months because of his familiarity with the school and dogged reporting.
But Tuesday, he stood in front of about 50 of us. Everyone seemed attentive as he spoke. I don’t know whether it was respect for Moran, respect for Viera or simply respect for the subject matter, but I didn’t see one person texting under their desk or day dreaming blankly at the wall. (more…)
Nice Work by The Daily Collegian
This video, produced by two staffers at The Daily Collegian, Krista Myers and Katherine Rodriguez, has gotten a lot of play on Twitter recently, and it’s easy to see why. Titled “We Are … Penn State—Students’ Reactions to the Events in Happy Valley,” the video is shot in arresting black and white, and it features Penn State students talking about what the past six weeks have been like and why they are still loyal to their school. It runs for a little over four minutes, and it’s well worth your time.
This seems like a good time, as well, to salute the work that all of the Collegian journalists have done over the past month. I know for a fact that some of them haven’t been to class quite as often since the first week of November, and I truly hope their professors took the circumstances into account. There are some things you can’t learn in a classroom, and covering a story like this is one of them.
These journalists were in the middle of everything—asking questions at the attorney general’s news conference, being pepper-sprayed while covering the riot, summing up Joe Paterno’s 61-year-career at the University with a special section on a day’s notice, publishing the first Sunday edition in the paper’s history. Back when I was all but living in the Collegian office, way back in the pre-Internet era, we stopped publishing during finals week. But these students continued to write stories, shoot video and photos, and tweet during the Thanksgiving week break, and they’re still on the job during this finals week.
They’ve covered the story fairly and accurately and comprehensively: You can find an index of all of their coverage here.
What do they do for an encore? I have no idea. As veteran sports journalist Malcolm Moran, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society in the College of Communications, noted in this interview, “What do you do if you’re 20 years old and you’re covering the story of your life? One friend of mine said, ‘I’ve been doing this 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.’ ”
Lori Shontz, senior editor
Trying to Find Teaching Moments
After a night of wandering downtown State College and campus, sadly reporting on the riots that followed the firing of Joe Paterno (the resignation of president Graham Spanier didn’t seem to be on anyone’s mind), I got up this morning, and I went to class.
Mike Poorman ’82 developed and teaches COMM 497G, “Joe Paterno: Communications and the Media,” and this semester’s section conveniently meets Thursday mornings at 9:45. I sat in the back row, a few seats a way from a couple of current football players who are enrolled in the class, and listened to two of sports journalism’s best, Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated and Pat Forde of Yahoo Sports, speak about how the media has covered the sexual abuse charges against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky ’66, ’71g, the perjury charges against athletic director Tim Curley ’76, ’78g and acting vice president Gary Schultz ’71, ’75g, and the ensuing events.
Said Posnanski, who’s been living in town to write a biography of Paterno, “I’ve never been around a story that has changed as fast as this one.”
Said Forde, who parachuted in after the LSU–Alabama game last weekend to jump on the story, “I packed for two days and this is Day 4, with Days 5 and 6 to come. I might be running around here in gym shorts soon.”
The students asked good questions, including (more…)
An Attention to Detail Almost Beyond Belief
For the past several weeks, I’ve been reading Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson’s book on the Great Migration, about how and why millions of African-Americans left the South (and Jim Crow) to move north. It’s a beautiful, engrossing book, with the kind of detail that leaves me—as both a writer and a reader—breathless.
I figured that Wilkerson spent a ton of time with her subjects. I knew she did a nearly unbelievable amount of background research: She interviewed 1,200 people to find the three protagonists for the book, which she worked on for 15 years.
But until I heard Wilkerson speak Tuesday night at the Foster-Foreman Conference of Distinguished Writers, I didn’t fully appreciate the level to which she goes to report. Here’s the story that’s going to stick with me:
Best Penn State Games? Best Creamery Flavor? This Book Has You Covered
When David and Matt Pencek began attending Penn State football games, they didn’t care who was playing. As long as there were guys in blue and white with no names on their jerseys, yummy food at the tailgate, and music from the Blue Band, they were cool. That said, David was 6, and Matt only a few years older.
Said David, “We saw the Colgates, the Akrons …”
They’re still a little bitter that they were left with their grandparents for the classic 1982 Nebraska game, but they didn’t allow that slight to sour them on Penn State football—or the university. And now David ’94 and Matt ’91 have teamed to write The Great Book of Penn State Sports Lists, which they call “the book that will settle all those debates about Penn State sports … or is it (more…)
How They Spent Their Summer Vacation
In our Sept./Oct. issue, now arriving in mailboxes, you’ll meet a handful of Penn State students who landed some coveted summer internships—and completely bust the myth that “internship” = “grunt work.”
In addition to the nine students profiled in the print edition, we thought you’d also enjoy hearing about a 10th: Audrey Snyder, who spent the summer in Milwaukee covering the Brewers for MLB.com. A senior in the College of Communications and a sports fanatic, Snyder was one of only 30 students nationwide to score the MLB gig, and the only intern covering the Brewers, making for a packed schedule and tight deadlines. Snyder squeezed in a few minutes (on a game day, no less) to (more…)
Advice for the College-Bound from Steve Sampsell
Steve Sampsell ’90 is a journalist, a writer. So it’s not surprising that as he prepared for his older daughter to leave for college, he was inspired to put pen to paper. (Even though he works for Penn State’s College of Communications and his daughter, Dani, is going to Pitt.)
The result, originally just a gift for Dani, turned into Men Are Pigs: 93 Things a Dad Wants His Daughter to Know about College, a really fun self-published book full of snippets of wisdom from Steve himself, his wife, Susan Eastley ’90, ’04g, and an assortment of other friends and relatives. Dani was born in 1993, hence the 93 snippets. (Click here for more info.)
I’d like to take a moment to discuss No. 61: “No matter your major, take some introductory business classes.” Back in the day, my own dad dished out liberal helpings of that very same advice every time I called home. He’d say stuff like, “Lor, you should take a few business classes,” or “Lor, you know, a minor in business wouldn’t hurt.” That sounded like a fate worse than death, and I’d respond with, say, the news that I’d just changed my minor to sport history. I could pretty much hear him pounding his head off the wall.
Twenty-plus years later, I’m gainfully employed. The sport history minor really did come in handy as a sports writer and editor. But that said … if I could do over, I would take a few introductory business classes. I can’t believe I’m writing that.
Can’t get around it. Dads are almost always right.
Lori Shontz, senior editor
P.S. If you’ll be in town later this month, Steve will be signing copies at the Student Book Store on Aug. 21.
Of Barry White, Molly Hatchet, and My Dear Friend, Pat Boland
Pat Boland is giving a toast at my wedding -- and making the guests crack up -- in this photo by Gene Maylock.
During my 25 years in journalism, I’ve heard a lot of reporters, writers, teachers, academics, and wanna-bes explain how to succeed in the profession. But only one ever got to the heart of the matter by quoting velvet-voiced crooner and consummate ladies’ man Barry White.
That’s longtime State College radio broadcaster—and way more important, my friend—Pat Boland.
Pat ’91 was visiting my journalism class a couple of semesters ago when one of the students asked him a question about interviewing. This was right in Pat’s wheelhouse. After a throwaway reference to former Soul Train host Don Cornelius (you had to be there, but I swear it worked), he told everyone they should consider a line from one of White’s hit songs, “What am I Gonna Do with You Now?”
“Ain’t what you got, babe,” Pat quoted. “It’s how you use it.”
It was vintage Pat, making a connection that no one else would see, one that was equal parts obscure, hilarious, and somehow dead-on accurate.
In this case, he drove home to the students that (more…)
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