MMU Student Publishes Story in The Gazette

Image from The Gazette's web site--taken by Madelyn Orton MMU student, who wrote a feature about women who coach college men and high school boys. Shown is Hudson boys’ soccer coach Sue Rink during a Friday night game.

It was especially nice to see the Sunday Gazette this morning, due to the sports section.

This feature story, the visual anchor of the front page of the sports section, was a project a Mount Mercy University student did in an MMU journalism class.

Madelyn Orton is identified as a junior by The Gazette, which is true since her sophomore year has just ended, but basically, she did this project as a sophomore.

For a class I was teaching, Madelyn came up with the idea of a feature story on women who teach men’s sports. She did a lot of research to identify such coaches in Iowa, including contacting the state’s high school athletic association and prowling college web sites. She also pitched the story idea off campus.

JR Ogden, sports editor of The Gazette, liked the idea and agreed to meet with Madelyn to help her plan the reporting.

Madelyn spoke with the coaches, tracked her contacts on a spreadsheet, asked for images and even drove to a high school soccer game to make her own image to go with the story.

And the results were on the front page of the sports section today. It was a nicely done story, and I’m thrilled that The Gazette was interested in it. Congratulations, Madelyn, and if you get The Gazette and can spare your copy of today's sports section, please let me know.

What I Think of The Post

An old friend, some weeks ago, posed a question to me: What do I think of the movie “The Post?”

Well, spoiler alert, I love it.

For one thing, it has a trio of giants—it was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars both Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham. The movie does a decent job of telling the story of the Pentagon Papers, although it does fudge it a bit—the eventual Supreme Court decision to allow both “The Washington Post” and “New York Times” to publish information from a secret government history of the war in Vietnam was not a total victory for the free press because there were so many decisions issued.

True, the papers won 6-3, but those six judges who favored the papers had were too divided in their reasons to set clear precedent.

Still, the movie seems, to me, to be fairly true to the people, the times they lived in and the historic story. And if the story seems to resonate now, it’s not an accident—President Nixon made some long term political strategic decisions that set his party on the road (the highway to Hell) to where it is today.

Beyond whether the narrative is capital T true, I also laud the film for its feel and texture. Journalism is often represented badly in the movies. Romantic comedies, in particular, often present newspaper writers as leading glamorous, odd lives that correspond not all to the actual life of any correspondent.

For example, in case you wonder, neither “Sleepless in Seattle” nor “Runaway Bride” has any character who appears to actually be a newspaper journalist.

“The Post” is not a rom-com, and it gets the feel of a newspaper and news people right. I especially appreciated how it brought the media world of 1971 back to life—the clacking typewriters all over the newsroom, the copy editor using a pencil to mark up a story, and the many montages featuring a Linotype machine setting the words in hot metal for printing.

A lying Republican president attempts to use his powers to thwart and punish mainstream journalists, particularly those of “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” Yeah, the movie is set in 1971, but it sure does echo in 2018.

I also liked that the movie made Katharine Graham something of a feminist icon—because she was. The journalism world of 1971 was very masculine—indeed the whole power structure of society was. That hasn’t exactly changed since then, but sexism was more overt and obvious in 1971.

Anyway, I also just liked the movie as a movie. Hanks and Streep, why has it taken so long? They are America’s top actors at the top of their game in this movie—and it’s not just them. The characters that surround Bradley and Graham are written well and played by actors who make them interesting and complicated.

And the lemonade? It’s the kind with lemons in it.

Which is the best lemonade, unless you have vodka.

So, old friend, in short—“The Post” has the Joe seal of approval. Six of six QWERTY marks.

Editor Tells Students about Keeping Trust

Zack Kucharski, executive editor of The Gazette, speaks with a Mount Mercy student in a conference room at the paper May 1, 2018.

The main product that belongs to any media outlet or journalist is trust, Zack Kucharski, executive editor at The Gazette told one of my classes this morning.

We were on our annual pilgrimage to the newsroom of The Gazette, our local daily newspaper. It’s one of my favorite days of the year, partly because Zack is always such a kind host to our tours.

Today, the May 1 morning began with me dithering about transportation. To bike or not to bike: That was the question. There were storms west of here, but here there were none at the time, and the weather app on my phone indicated just a 15 percent chance of rain.

But on my KCRG app, Kaj O’Mara seemed to be more sure of rain. So, I graded some papers at home and let the time slip by until driving my Dodge rather than pedaling one of my bikes became my only option to get to The Gazette.

Score one for local media. As I drove south to downtown Cedar Rapids, the sky, which has been dry for a fortnight, opened up with a warm spring thunderstorm.

Parking was a challenge, as it seemed all of the streets near The Gazette were under construction. I arrived a few minutes after 9:30 to find just a handful of my students had arrived before me. But, as Zack joined us about 9:40 to start our one-hour visit, more showed up—eventually 16 students joined us, my whole class.

Mount Mercy students meet with editor of The Gazette.

We had a quick look at the newsroom, and then Zack ushered us into a conference room for a 15-minute Q and A before the morning editors’ news meeting. A handful of editors crowded into the room with us and quickly reviewed what’s going on in the CR corner of the world.

After the news meeting, we had a few more minutes with Zack. He spoke with students about The Gazette’s new paywall, about how the students should be comfortable telling stories in many venues and about trust.

In a fake “fake news” world, maintaining trust is the main objective for journalists.

Zack also enjoined students to remember that each of them has just one indispensable asset: The trust that others place in them. That’s true whether the others are readers, viewers, listeners or professional colleagues.

“We make mistakes every day,” Zack added. But when you make a mistake, he said, admit it, correct it and learn from it—most of all, don’t deny it. To deny is to break trust.

Zack speaks in lobby of Gazette.

I believe Zack Kucharski believes what he says. And I think that, as one of the owner-employees of The Gazette, what he said reflects a spirit that is present in what The Gazette does. These days, it’s in fashion to bash the media from the right and sometimes the left for real and perceived biases.

But, trust me, if you want to know what’s going on CR, you do need a source you can believe in. For weather, for me, that Kaj. For news, for me, it is The Gazette. They aren’t perfect, but if you tune only into their imperfections, trust me, you’ll be placing trust somewhere else where it probably doesn’t belong.

And I trust students heard that message.