It's All About the Children

Anyone who reads this blog regularly cares very deeply about the children -- and I don't mean in an icky Peter O'Toole sense -- so you will not be disappointed to know that I've not been posting much this week because I'm cranking up my reporting and journalism ethics syllabi for the spring semester, which starts next week. Particularly the ethics syllabus. First two or three times I teach a course I tend to redo the syllabus drastically every semester -- all part of the fun but it eats into my playtime.

And I've also been working on the USF Journalism Blog.

For the children.

So, those of you who wonder how the youth who attended USF and who did journalism got that first job might want to take a look at this emerging thread. The USF journalism program is no mass production enterprise that clamps on your head, picks you up and runs you down the assembly line, crimping you, trimming you and running you through the acid bath before dropping you into that first job without a thought or a choice every bruising your pretty head. As a journalism program (small) wrapped in a liberal arts education (Jesuit), we prepare you generally pretty well, but it's the self starters who get ahead. Some of them are now describing how they self-started.

It brings a tear to these old eyes, as so much does these days, up to and including the gallant Katie Couric going down in flames.