MY JOURNALISM JOURNEY

Mind the Gap

MICHIGAN STATE

Michigan State University, on the shores of the Red Cedar River in East Lansing, is a sprawling 5,239-acre campus. When I enrolled in the fall of 1962, there were 29,031 students, including 4,511 out-of-staters.

Far Rockaway contributed two freshmen. I was Spartan #349045.

Never mind its size or standing, MSU’s allure to a wannabee journalist was the reputation of the State News, a million-dollar-a-year student daily that provided hands-on training and offered salaries. With an audited circulation of 40,000, the newspaper was a repeat winner of the Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker award—college journalism’s equivalent of the Pulitzer.

Icing on the cake: Michigan State had a Big Ten fencing team.

En garde!

As freshmen, we were required to take courses in Humanities, Natural Science, and American Thought & Language. We were allowed only one elective. I chose Journalism in a Free Society.

I’ll let you guess which course netted an A.

First stop after registration was the State News, whose second-floor newsroom in the Student Services Building would become the center of my universe. That, and the recreational sports facility, where I joined the fencing team, won a freshman intramural competition, and landed a spot on the varsity.

But the extra-curricular activities came at cost—a sea of C's. My good journalism grade was an outlier.

Liberal arts requires a liberal amount of study. I was overextended.

Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be the newspaper.

In my sophomore year, I dropped fencing. It gave me more time for studies and for the State News, where I honed my reporting skills and moved up the ladder. In my junior year, I became sports editor. In my senior year, I was named managing editor.

I learned the nuts and bolts of newspapering—prioritizing stories, dummying pages, and putting a paper to bed. I directed production of a six-section, 84-page Welcome Edition the heft of the Sunday NY Times.

When Michigan State’s football team went an undefeated 9-0-1, we put out an ad-laden Rose Bowl Special. The newsprint was chemically treated to smell like flowers.

Too bad the footballers stunk it up in Pasadena, losing to the UCLA Bruins, 14-12.

The paper’s commercial success, however, masked a problem. The State News was owned by the university. The newspaper’s "general manager"—a retired publisher not on the MSU faculty—saw himself as its eyes and ears.

Jagust, he was not.

One evening, with deadline approaching, he killed a story. It was about a law suit against the Board of Trustees. A former student claimed he was denied re-admission to MSU because of views opposing the Vietnam War.

The advisor said the matter was “under litigation.” I argued that U.S. District Court transcripts were public record.

The advisor prevailed.

When all avenues of negotiation failed, I resigned, along with three senior editors.

There were those who felt we should have barricaded the newspaper office. An alternative campus weekly called us “a cause without rebels.” It made immediate headlines at the rival U-M Michigan Daily—scooping the State News by a day on its own story.

Barricades or no, the resignations were a catalyst for change. The State News was spun off from the university. It took a few years, but the newspaper became an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, free from prior restraint or censorship.

It’s a lesson for MSU freshmen studying Journalism in a Free Society.