Columbia Journalism sChool Winter 2010 - Berkeley Graduate ...

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6 Columbia Journalism sChool Winter 2010 Alumni Profile neil henry ’78 — When he ThinkS aBouT The JoB he recently took on, as dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (after leading the school on an interim basis since 2007), Neil Henry recalls the movie “Quest for Fire,” in which a group of prehistoric humans protects embers of fire in order to ensure the tribe’s survival. “I think deans and schools of journalism today are sort of like that,” Henry said. “We’re increasingly vital protectors of the flame of professional values in this field at a time when the industry is in severe distress.” In his book, “American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media,” Henry detailed the economic impact of the digital age on the traditional news industry, the ethical failures and growing holes in news coverage, and the repercussions for democratic society. When he became dean at Berkeley on a transitional basis, it was an opportunity to attack some of the problems he outlined in the book, while propelling the school in new and exciting directions. A sharp 16 percent drop in state financing has required Henry to rely even more on the generosity of private donors to achieve his goals. “Desperate times call for creative responses,” Henry said. A Ford Foundation grant enabled a retooling of the school’s core curriculum, requiring all students to learn multimedia skills as they learn news-gathering, writing and ethics. As part of that grant, reporting classes are producing digital news sites for neglected Bay Area communities, including the cities of Richmond and Oakland, and the Mission District of San Francisco. “Our students are immersed in these communities in ways the school has not been before, reporting the news and serving the public,” Henry said. “It was largely due to these excellent projects that the school has now teamed with KQED public broadcasting in a major new initiative to build an independent nonprofit local news hub, supported by $5 million in seed funding from San Francisco businessman Warren Hellman.” Henry believes that it is Berkeley’s role as an ethical and professional leader, and content provider, which inspired another major recent grant — from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — which funds students’ and visiting scholars’ travel to Africa over the next two years to provide stories in all media about the food crisis on the continent. The school’s first major collaboration with Google resulted in the fall 2009 national conference at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, focused on future business models for media and journalism. Tom Goldstein ’69, former dean at both Berkeley and Columbia journalism schools, who hired Henry to teach at Berkeley in 1993, is not surprised at Henry’s early success: “He has an extraordinary skill set — he has infectious enthusiasm, he’s a natural teacher, a very clear explainer and an exceptionally good listener — and he’s off to a wonderful start. I think he was born to be dean at Berkeley.” Certainly Henry’s background has prepared him well to face the challenges of adapting journalism education to these tumultuous times. Raised in Seattle, Henry earned a bachelor’s degree in political science at Princeton in 1977 and a master’s from Columbia in 1978. “Mainstream journalism was, in a sense, a new field of opportunity
for black people back then,” Henry said. “I loved writing, I loved learning about the world, and I felt I might have a future in the profession. Columbia helped give me focus and direction, but I also learned that reporting could be a helluva lot of fun.” After graduation, Henry worked as a metro, national and foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and was a staff writer for Newsweek before joining the Berkeley faculty. At The Post, Henry said, “I most loved writing human interest and enterprise stories. I liked exploring the ragged edges of Washington, far removed from the political and ‘official’ scenes.” Some of his unorthodox assignments included going undercover as a homeless person in Baltimore and Washington and as a migrant worker in North Carolina. Later he worked on the paper’s investigative staff, then with the national staff as a feature correspondent covering places from West Virginia to Nevada, and finally he served nearly three years in Africa as The Post’s bureau chief, based in Kenya. “Neil is extraordinarily moral and empathetic,” said Bill Hamilton, Henry’s former editor and colleague at The Post and now deputy managing editor at Politico.com. “There isn’t an ounce of cynicism in him and that always came through in his writing. I guess I would call him a student of the human condition — he brings an unusual compassion to everything he writes and, I suspect, to everything he does at Berkeley.” After 16 years in daily journalism, Henry decided that he wanted to return to the west coast and make time and space to do a different kind of writing. He became a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford and began teaching at Berkeley’s journalism school. He married Letitia Lawson, now a political scientist specializing in Africa at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, had a daughter Zoe, now 17, and in 2002 published an autobiographical family history, “Pearl’s Secret: A Black Man’s Search for His White Family.” Former student Ryan Lillis, now city hall reporter for The Sacramento Bee, recalls how Henry “connected with all his students on a personal level and how enthusiastic he was about everything.” When Charla Bear, now a producer at NPR in Washington, D.C., arrived at Berkeley, she felt intimidated and out of place. “I’m part Native American and part Alaskan native, and I come from a very low income background,” Bear said. “Because I was coming in as a real outsider, I was looking for a mentor to inspire, coach and teach me. I really found that in Neil. He took you from wherever you were to the highest point you could reach.” Henry doesn’t get as much time walking Hazel, his beloved golden retriever, or relaxing on the golf course as he used to, said Rob Gunnison, director of school affairs and a lecturer at Berkeley, who’s known him for 15 years. “Demand on all deans is extraordinary,” Gunnison said. “They’re in a relentless pressure cooker, fundraising or resolving problems not able to be resolved at a different level. It’s tough and wearing. But Neil wins a lot of points for his openness, frankness and low-key approach. He’s a half-full kind of guy. I always know when he’s coming because I hear the staff laughing down the hall. People warm to him immediately.” Henry believes his role as a dean of journalism is to be a good consensus builder and ethical leader. “The critical programmatic challenge I face as a dean is to communicate a sense of shared mission, responsibilities, and goals, and to ensure that we are all rowing in the same direction,” Henry said. “While we do our best to embrace change at the school, I think it’s also critical to sustain and build the kinds of things our program has always done exceptionally well, such as international reporting, magazine writing, photography, and radio and television broadcast journalism.” Correction: In the Alumni Profile of Linda Winslow ’67, which appeared in our Fall 2009 issue, the achievements of another alumnus, Howard Weinberg ’65, were inadvertently slighted. Robert MacNeil was quoted as saying that in 1975, the first season of what became the MacNeil/Lehrer Report, “We were on very lean rations with only two producers and Linda was one of them; she did the very first program, which was on the New York City fiscal crisis.” In actuality, MacNeil said, Howard Weinberg and Linda Winslow “alternated as nightly producers on that program, with Howard doing the first night [the NYC fiscal crisis] and Linda the second.” From The alumni BoarD — By Alexis Gelber ’80, Chair For meDia-neWS JunkieS, there are days when reading Romenesko, I Want Media, The Wall Street Journal and the business section of The New York Times feels like a tour through the graveyard of journalism. The news in our world is undeniably bleak: in the last few months alone we’ve seen the demise of many prominent newspapers and magazines — not to mention the almost daily body count from layoffs, buyouts and bureau-closings at the media organizations that are still surviving. And yet when I’m at Columbia, I find the mood is very different. There’s a sense of creativity and energy at the Journalism School, and a forwardlooking approach to the challenges facing our profession. Leonard Downie and Michael Schudson’s thoughtful report on “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” outlined a “new policy model for news,” as Dean Nicholas Lemann has said — and puts Columbia at the center of the discussion about the future of the media. At the most recent Alumni Board meeting, Dean Lemann and Academic Dean Bill Grueskin briefed us on the latest curriculum changes at the J-School. And Columbia has assembled a dynamic group of digital-media experts who are giving students skills to create the next forms of journalism. On the Alumni Board, we’re moving ahead in that constructive spirit. We have focused our own efforts around initiatives spearheaded by our five new subcommittees. Brief reports from the Alumni Board meeting on November 18 are as follows: 1. Communications: Formerly known as the Publications subcommittee, this group has helped formulate continued on page 8 7
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