Reunion—fun and funds
By Steve Fennessy ’07
Mike Wallace calls for a THUNDEROUS ROUND for Charles Eisendrath.
Mike Wallace wore a grin wider than the brim of Charles Eisendrath’s fedora when he took the stage of an Ann Arbor ballroom on a Saturday afternoon this past September, during the Knight-Wallace Fellowship Reunion and Milestone Celebration. In front of him, a sea of alumni milled about, nursing pre-prandial drinks, catching up with old friends and making new ones. The official program didn’t call for an appearance by Wallace until later, but evidently there was something that needed saying that just couldn’t wait. Seeing him waiting impatiently for a microphone, it seemed the weekend was about to get even better.
Which was a tall order. From the moment KWF alumni began arriving in Ann Arbor, the weekend promised to be a memorable one. First there was the weather. Late summer can be a mixed bag in Michigan, but the reunion skies were made to order—puffy clouds lifted from a “Simpsons” episode, days warmed by sunlight streaming through leafy trees, evenings cool and crisp.
Then there was Eisendrath’s Big Announcement made 33 years after the inaugural Fellowship class came to Michigan, and 20 years after he took the reins of a program that was then on shaky financial footing. On Friday afternoon, in the sun-dappled backyard of Wallace House, Eisendrath announced to a standing-room-only crowd that as of 2006 the 12 American Fellowships are fully endowed. A standing ovation followed.
Jack Kresnak ’90, Caroline Coco ’75S, John Collier ’75 meet at the Hovey Lecture.
Among those in the crowd was Jack Kresnak ’90, who didn’t have to drive far for the reunion. Kresnak has worked at the Detroit Free Press for 37 years, half that time spent covering juvenile justice issues. He was 39 when he was chosen as a Fellow, and coming to Ann Arbor that year he suffered from a malady that afflicts many of us—a nagging insecurity, the feeling that he was “faking it.” The Fellowship, Kresnak explained reunion weekend, instilled in him the confidence to realize and foster his own potential. “It gave me the courage to do good work,” he said. And sure enough, in 2005 Kresnak won the Toni House Journalism Award for his stories covering the court system.
Michael Vitez ’95 tells Chuck Smith ’06S and
Marzio Mian ’02 about his now-published book.
Kresnak’s tale wasn’t unusual. As the weekend went on, the transformative effect of eight months at the University of Michigan as a Knight-Wallace Fellow (or spouse) was evident in virtually every conversation. Take Michael Vitez ’95, the Philadelphia Inquirer writer who won a Fellowship after his third try. At Michigan, he took astrophysics, ice skating classes, and learned to play the Michigan fight song on his trombone. Two years after his return to the Inquirer, Vitez wrote a series on aging that earned him a Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism. Vitez’s experience is invoked often by Eisendrath as proof that the KWF formula (dream big, indulge your passions, and great things will happen) may work in unpredictable ways, but it definitely works.
While some alumni have moved on to other professions, most have stayed in journalism. It was to those former Fellows that Ralph Williams—much-beloved Michigan professor of English—addressed his talk on Saturday morning in the Wallace House backyard. Eisendrath introduced him as “one of the best teachers that has ever walked a campus anywhere.” But what could a Shakespeare expert have to say to a bunch of reporters? A lot, it turns out.
Professor Ralph Williams makes the classics
matter
in today’s world of journalism.
Williams, a lanky Canadian whose booming voice probably woke up the ladies in the sorority house next door, came to talk to us about Proteus, the Greek sea-god who could change his shape at will. “The task,” Williams said, “was to hang on to Proteus until he returned to his original shape.” In today’s spin-saturated world, he continued, it is the role of journalists to wrestle with the protean nature of the powerful, until what emerges isn’t just a pile of facts, but a picture of truth.
“What I’m urging is that in your own time—in a time when I see a considerable oppression in speech—you let it be known that we were here,” he encouraged. He read passages from Ovid, Shakespeare, Tim O’Brien and French writer Irène Némirovsky, who perished in the Holocaust, to show how a lived reality can be reflected with words. He even drew allusions to today’s political climate by evoking Brutus, Julius Caesar’s trusted lieutenant who agonizes over whether to kill his friend in Shakespeare’s infamous play. Explained Williams: “Brutus is asking, ‘Is pre-emptive strike a good idea? A bad idea? Do you execute for intent or thought, or do you execute for action?’ The great irony is that in killing Julius Caesar, Brutus brings about the very tyranny he’d hoped to avoid.”
“There’s a great deal happening on our watch,” Williams concluded. “And it is a moral watch, and the struggle with Proteus is profound. The struggle is hard. So fight hard, so you can say, ‘I was here, and I spoke.’”
Ford Fessenden ’90, Dan Gillmor ’87
and Faye Flam ’05 compare notes on new media.
One of those journalists speaking out—but mostly listening, as the best reporters do—is Dan Gillmor ’87, a former business columnist with the San Jose Mercury-News and the author of the book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. In 2005, Gillmor quit his newspaper job and has since started the Center for Citizen Media, whose goal is to encourage grassroots journalism and citizen participation in the media. On Saturday afternoon of the reunion weekend, Gillmor talked about his eight months as a Fellow and recalled an epiphany he had a month into his Fellowship.
“It was a perfect October morning, in the middle of Indian summer. I was hurrying through the main quad, on my way to class. In my backpack there was a book I’d wanted to read. I thought, ‘I’d rather sit down right here and read this book than go to class.’ Which I did. But that wasn’t the epiphany. The epiphany was that nobody cared. That moment freed my mind,” he explained.
To Gillmor, the most enlightening moments of his Fellowship came not in the classroom, but through realizations that both strengthened and humbled his ego. “Going away may threaten some careers, but it’s really good for people to realize that, although they’re absent for eight months, their organization is just fine without them. The Fellowship is an antidote to thinking too highly about yourself.”
Toss your hats and stamp your feet! Endowment went over the top!
On Saturday afternoon, the alumni gathered in a ballroom of the Palmer Commons, not far from Wallace House. For football fans, however, the timing couldn’t have been worse. At that very moment, some 180 miles to the southwest, the Michigan football team was going up against the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Upsetting the Number 2-ranked Irish in South Bend—the first road game of the year—would shoot the Wolverines up the national rankings. So between sips of wine and loads of shop talk, the same question kept popping up: Anybody know the score?
Enter Mike Wallace and his very pressing announcement. The score, the 1939 UM graduate announced with a smile from the stage, was 20–7. And that was still in the first quarter! A few hours later, when word came down that UM had routed the Irish 47–21, even the sports agnostics joined in the cheers.
Board members David E. Davis, Jr., Peter Osnos ’74, Clarence Page and Mike Wallace prepare to discuss where journalism is going with alumni Dan Gillmor ’87, Marzio Mian ’02, Yvonne Simons ’03 and Ellen Soeteber ’89.
The ebullience was quickly tempered by the first panel leading up to dinner. Titled “Journalism—Bottoming Out or Climbing Back?”, it included such luminaries as Wallace, Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page, Automobile founder David E. Davis, Jr., and Ellen Soeteber, who resigned in 2005 as editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after Pulitzer sold the paper and Soeteber was forced to cut staff by 15 percent. The panel’s consensus was grim. Newspapers and TV news are being gutted in order to keep profit margins high, which weakens the product, alienating readers and viewers. The vicious cycle is an old story. “Too many editors are having to figure out how just to maintain mediocrity,” Soeteber said. “I don’t know of any business that’s prospered by offering less to customers for the same price—or even higher prices.”
Those who made their careers in print have seen the writing on the wall. “Print is in a state of collapse,” said Davis, Jr., who has started an e-zine for car enthusiasts called Winding Road. “It’s not a happy time to be in this business.”
Still, the consensus was clear: giving customers a superior product and turning a profit aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. “Who knows?” said Peter Osnos ’74, founder of PublicAffairs publishing. “Forty years from now, people might be sitting here saying, ‘Can you believe that the largest audience today is for a newspaper?’ Why? ‘Cause it’s a damn good newspaper!’ Who would have believed that?”
Tickled—Ben Davis ’92, David Farrell ’93
and Michelle Genese ’02 appreciate a co-panelist.
The topic of the second and final panel was a welcome counterpoint to the first—“Moving and Shaking, Post-Fellowship.” Alumni such as Chris Carey ’06 and Dave Farrell ’93 talked of how they’ve exploited niches opened up by the fragmentation of conventional media. After leaving the Detroit News, Farrell started an electronic clip sheet and pores over dozens of newspapers every day, looking for mentions of his clients, which he and his staff then assemble and forward to the clients. Carey’s new initiative is Sharesleuth.com, an online muckraking news site that investigates corporate fraud. Not even a year old, Sharesleuth.com is underwritten by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, whom Carey emailed last year on a whim. “I feel like the guy who got the golden ticket,” Carey said, echoing a feeling familiar to anyone who’s ever received that call in May telling them they’re a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow.
