With a Wild Surmise
The annual Mark of Excellence (MOE) Awards Luncheon is one of the true highlights of the year for a regional director. We get to hand out recognition to outstanding student journalists, awards that may play an important role in the careers of these young reporters. I know that because the speaker at our 2009 Region 6 Awards Luncheon remembered his MOE Award ceremony 29 years later.
Several years ago we had a luncheon speaker who was being realistic and offered a gloom and doom scenario to our audience of young journalists. There’s certainly grounds for such a perspective but that’s not the only realistic way of looking at the state of journalism today.
That’s certainly not how David Stoeffler looks at it. David currently operates his own business, Touchstone News Consulting, following three decades as a reporter, editor and news executive. He’s been the top editor at a number of newspapers and was the first vice president for news of Lee Enterprises. David also played a key role in the affiliation of the Madison (WI) pro chapter of SPJ, and preceded me in the position of president of that chapter.
It was my pleasure to invite David to give a talk at our 2009 Awards Luncheon and he responded with an insightful assessment of the role of journalism and why there will always be a need for journalists. He was blunt when necessary, calling journalism “an aloof institution that often fails to own up to its mistakes.” But he also noted that our society is dependent upon journalism. “We must give people the information they need to engage as citizens of a democracy and as people curious about the world around them,” he said.
He very clearly perceives that people today are awash in a world of information. “People feel overwhelmed by the information flowing at them,” he said. “People will want someone to make sense of it all. That person is a journalist.”
David was frank, challenging, insightful, and inspiring. It was exactly the kind of talk student journalists need to hear. I went back and listened to the talk again today and decided to post it online, for listening or downloading. (Time 19:15) David also has a condensed version of his talk posted on his website.