About a million years ago — OK, 16 — Kevin Smith, SPJ’s national president in 2009-10, called to let me know Miami of Ohio was looking for a PTer to teach beginning newswriting. Now up the road at the University of Dayton, Kevin was then a member of Miami’s journalism faculty.

Recently back in Cincinnati after a brief foray into Chicago journalism, I was juggling some minor freelance assignments and child-rearing. A teaching gig for the fall of 1997 — albeit with no job security — sounded pretty good.

Sixteen years into the teaching biz — I’m now a senior lecturer in the Miami Journalism Program — I’m not sure I’ve ever properly thanked Kevin for that call. So here it is: Thanks.

Kevin, a long and faithful member of SPJ’s Ethics Committee, will do me another big favor Thursday when he lectures at my Ethics in Journalism class.  Students spent part of class on the excellent SPJ Ethics Web pages today working up questions. We’re ready for your visit, Mr. Smith.

This entry was posted by Patti Newberry on Tuesday, October 16th, 2012 at 7:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.