Lecture

'Journalism can change your life'

     Charles L. Overby, president and chief executive officer of The Freedom Forum, gave the annual Seline Memorial Lecture April 7 at the college honors convocation in the Nebraska Union. Here is what he told students, parents, faculty and friends.

By Charles L. Overby
The Freedom Forum

  It is a pleasure to be with you today to salute the award winners of the College of Journalism.

  I’m sure you know it, but the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska ranks among the very few best in the country.

  That means that the award winners here today are among the best of the best. Forget what they say about New York City; if you make it here at the University of Nebraska, you can make it anywhere.

  I want to emphasize that again: If you can make it here at Nebraska, you can make it anywhere.

 Most of you have lived most of your lives in Nebraska. You haven’t had the opportunity to explore life on a national or international scale.

  When or if you venture outside Nebraska, you may ask yourself how you will do.

  Because of the outstanding education and professional training that you have received here, you will do well.

  Not many students leave journalism school with the level of hands-on training that you have received.

  It’s important to understand the value of what you have here.

  I would like to take a few minutes this morning to share some practical in-sights into your future and the future of journalism.

  First, I want to state emphatically that I think the future of news and journalism is bright.

  We live in a news-oriented society.

  There are more outlets for news than ever before — newspapers, television, radio, on-line services.

  When I got out of college, I had only one realistic journalistic alternative — newspapers. Today, you may decide to work for a telephone company, a computer company, an on-line service or any number of hybrids — all positioning themselves to join newspapers and television stations as information providers.

  The important thing is people who know how to practice journalism will have more options than ever before.

  The change in the media landscape is not a threat to graduating job seekers. It is an opportunity.

  But even as the media landscape changes, a few things remain constant. I believe there are three important elements to succeeding in journalism:

  1. Accuracy.
  2. Fairness.
  3. Optimism.

  These same traits are important in succeeding in life as well.

  1. Accuracy — being truthful to others and, even more important, truthful to yourself.
  2. Fairness — the ability to understand how to treat people fairly regardless of their background or position.
  3. Optimism — the basic belief that your life can be better and that you can do good things for others and for yourself.

  In the media business, accuracy and fairness are the two most important characteristics of a journalist.

  Accuracy is your ticket of admission to a journalism career. The quest for accuracy is never-ending. As a journalist, you’re only as good as your last story and its accuracy.

  Fairness is equally important, but it is not equally emphasized.

  The general public’s attitudes toward the media are declining. I believe the major reason is they believe the media are not fair in their news coverage.

  There is too much blurring between opinion and fact in news accounts, particularly on television.

  We must begin to emphasize fairness at every turn. Advocacy journalism is turning the public away from the traditional news media.

  In addition to accuracy and fairness, I want to offer a broader perspective about journalism and what it can mean to you.

  Today, foremost, I want to emphasize that journalism can change your life. You may not believe that. But it is true. Journalism gives you a front-row seat to life and all its opportunities.

  Journalism offers a road to success and happiness if you don’t happen to be born rich or if you don’t happen to be well connected.

  Of course, there certainly is no guarantee that you will achieve success or happiness if you are born rich or if you or your family are well connected. But those elements are generally perceived as being head starts in moving down the road to success.

  Journalism offers you a different road, a career path that I believe offers young people a gateway to happiness, fulfillment and success. Journalism has opened doors literally and figuratively for me all of my life.

  Looking back on it, I know now what I didn’t know when I started: Journalism is a great equalizer. Journalism can do more to make you equal to everybody else than any profession or career that I know.

  When I entered high school in Jackson, Miss., as a 10th grader, I had to choose an elective course. In junior high school, I took choral music. To say that I had no aptitude for choral music is grossly understating matters. In church, people turn around to see who is singing so badly.

  I was blessed with a mother who was extremely supportive of me. She constantly told me that I could grow up to be president. She believed it. And she made me believe in myself. But when I entered high school, even my supportive mother suggested that I consider another elective besides choral music.

  She suggested gently that I consider an elective that could help me choose a career, like journalism. I decided that I would give it a shot.

  I enrolled in that first journalism course, and on the second day of class, I remember distinctly turning to a friend and classmate and asking, “Do you mean that they pay you to do this?”

  It was the single most satisfying discovery of my life. The notion that I could be paid to do something that I liked was exhilarating. It still is.

  So many people I know trudge through their jobs. They’re miserable or feel trapped or both.

  I feel fortunate to have discovered the opportunities of journalism early in life.

  Virtually every day of my work life, I have looked forward to going to work. I jump out of bed every morning anxious to get started. In high school, I started working weekends, mornings before school and afternoons after school at the Jackson Daily News in Jackson, Miss.

  It was a great newspaper because you could do as much or as little as you wanted. So by the time I was in college, I was covering the legislature, covering gubernatorial campaigns, talking to people whom I never would have met, due to my social and financial standing.

  Journalism changed my life. It gave me self-esteem. It put me on a larger stage in life than I ever dreamed possible.

  I am not among those who think that journalism means you have to spend your entire life with newspapers or traditional news gathering operations.

  I have had a lot of interesting jobs, all because of journalism. My first love happens to be newspapers, but because journalism taught me how to write and communicate, it has led to many other interesting opportunities.

  Every job, in newspapers and out, I have asked that same question I asked as a sophomore in high school: “Do you mean they pay you to do this?”

  Let me mention two or three qualities that I learned from journalism that have helped me throughout my career. Perhaps they could help you.

  First, journalism taught me to listen and to ask questions.

  Now that sounds so simple, but the exercise of listening — really listening — is an art. Too few people today know how to practice listening. I am not talking about passive listening — just sitting there like a knot on a log.

  I am talking about active listening. That means asking people intelligent questions.

  I was blessed with two traits that helped me be a good listener. I was shy, and I was curious.

  I learned most people enjoy talking about themselves. And most people, if asked the proper questions, have interesting stories to tell about themselves. Always remember: Everybody, and I mean everybody, has a story to tell, generally about themselves.

  I learned that you can talk to anyone, in any position or station in life, if you can listen and ask questions.

  I learned that if you ask semi-intelligent questions, you can be viewed as a brilliant conversationalist.

  I am less shy today but sometimes find myself in tough situations. A while back, I was sitting in a restaurant in Moscow with the head of TASS news agency. He spoke only Russian and I spoke only English, but we had a translator. I wondered what we would talk about all night over dinner. We had little in common. He was 30 years older than I, his concept of news was quite different from mine and he seemed content to not speak unless spoken to.

  So I instinctively fell back to my favorite ploy: asking questions. He opened up, at least a little, and dinner proved enjoyable.

  The point of all this is that the journalistic trait of listening and asking questions can help you personally, and it can help your career, no matter what that career is.

  Another important trait for journalism that can help your career, no matter what it is, is to write and communicate clearly. Don’t get caught up in trying to write long sentences with fancy ad-jectives. Focus on clear writing, rather than fancy writing. Declarative sentences. Short paragraphs. Plain talk.

  People who know how to write clearly and talk clearly can do well in life.

  The third trait I recommend is the most important: hard work. Those of you who are being honored already understand that concept.

  A key to succeeding in life is exceeding expectations — exceeding other people’s expectations and, most importantly, exceeding your own expectations.

  Perhaps you can exceed expectations with intellectual brilliance.

  What has worked for me has been hard work.

  One word about hard work.

  Different people have different ideas about what constitutes hard work.

  I’ll give you my litmus test.

  It’s your response to the uninspired moment. Repeat: It’s your response to the uninspired moment. What do I mean by that?

  It is easy to shine in the spotlight.

  What is harder is how you react when you are out of the spotlight.

  At Nebraska, you have your highs and lows.

  Enjoy the highs.

  But remember it’s how you react to the lows — the uninspired moments — that will determine your true quality.

  Your response to the uninspired moments will go a long way toward determining if you exceed expectations.

  The last element that I want to emphasize is optimism. I’m not talking about sugary, misguided optimism.

  But most situations in life lend themselves to seeing a glass as half full or half empty.

  I’m a half-full person.

  I’ll close with a true story.

  My job requires that I travel a lot. That has its plusses and minuses. One of the minuses is that you generally have to travel in all types of weather.

  A couple of years ago, we had to get somewhere on an emergency basis, so we chartered a plane. The weather was stormy, and the ride was bumpy. The pilots were unfamiliar with the airport of our destination. The clouds were thick, and the visibility was near zero.

  Twice, the pilots tried to get low enough to be able to see the airport to land. And twice they had to pull back up because they had missed the landing.

  Each time, the violent rocking of the plane was awful on the way up and on the way down.

  Finally, on the third try, we made it. We were OK, but our paleness must have been obvious to the young airport employee who met us at the plane. He first asked me how was our trip, and he realized that was not a good question to ask. So, perhaps in his nervousness, this airport ground employee asked me another question. I now describe it as the dumbest question that has ever been posed to me. He looked toward the cloudy, black sky and asked: “Was the sun shining above the clouds?”

  Was the sun shining above the clouds? No, God took the day off!

  I’ve repeated that question to people from time to time to illustrate the right way and the wrong way to ask questions. But it was only a year or so ago that I realized the question may have been dumb, but the answer is striking.

  Yes, the sun IS shining above the clouds. And that is the message we all should remember — particularly as you prepare for careers and life that will certainly have its tough moments.

  No matter how stormy the situation, no matter how bumpy the ride, no matter how impenetrable the clouds may seem, the sun is always shining above the clouds.

  Journalism has helped me look above the clouds. I hope you will always reach beyond the clouds . . . for the bright opportunities that journalism can bring your way.

  Congratulations on your awards. Good luck in the future.