18A
FALL 2014
ADVISER UPDATE
ADVISER UPDATE
A.J. Liebling: A master craftsman
Miss Spinner goes to Baghdad in
‘Tell Them I Didn’t Cry’
BY RICHARD J. LEVINE
black
A
REPORTING
— Jackie
Spinner sits
in a Baghdad
bunker. When
questioned why
she went to
Iraq, she said,
“ ... because I
am a journalist:
we drive into
hurricanes,
not away from
them. We
chase the very
elements of
life that most
people try to
avoid.”
Anne Whitt
is a 1997-98 Dow
Jones Special
Recognition
Adviser, 1999
Florida Journalism
Teacher of the
Year and 2000
Distinguished
Adviser in JEA’s
National Yearbook
Adviser of the Year
competition. In
2002 NSPA and
JEA named her a
Pioneer. In 2006
Florida Scholastic
Press Association
gave her its
Medallion. Her
column, “Whitt
and Wisdom,” may
be read without
membership at
www.Walsworth.
com. Go to
Resources and
then Columns.
With her family
she also produces
a community
publication. Whitt
can be reached at
AWhitt1013@aol.
com.
Footnotes:Tales & Traditions of the Press
by Anne Whitt
J
SEIGENTHALER
Continued from page 17A
sometimes including “Freedom Sings”
with First Amendment Center President Ken Paulson. It was a musical
examination of First Amendment
issues. But the biggest Seigenthaler
treat for our students was off campus.
this one had few perks. When people are posted
overseas for permanent assignments, they bring
parts of their life (sic) with them, including families,
pets and furniture. In Iraq you go in alone, and the
bureau becomes your life, even your prison, as
we used to call it after being cooped up for days
at a time, unable to leave because of security
threats.”
Don Graham, the Post board chairman, told
Spinner, “No story is worth your life.”
During the nine-month stay, Spinner learned
many things, including the observation that 7-15
seconds pass between a beheading and death.
One day, a guard told Spinner he had been offered
$5,000 to reveal where she lived.
On her way to the airport for the trip home, the
departing-car checkpoint took so long that she just
decided to walk. A Post guard walked beside her
Seigenthaler and his wife, Delores,
treated our students in each session to dinner at their home, often
in the serene setting of the backyard
around the pool and on the screenedin porch. After dinner, the evening
always included a speaker who was
asked to lead a discussion about
writing, journalism, justice or the First
Amendment.
Update photo by
Jackie Spinner/
used with
permission
with pistol in hand.
Once home, she relished the freedom that had
been absent in Iraq, but she was amazed at the
bounty in her home country. Bounty she had taken
for granted. She stood in her grocery store and
counted eight kinds of green beans. Suddenly she
grew impatient with her own countrymen who went
about complaining of little inconveniences. She
could not watch television with such programming
as reality shows, or the obsession with the Michael
Jackson trial. She screamed at the TV.
She dreamed nightmares of insurgents catching
her. She even jumped when the toaster popped.
When her mother had their Illinois town celebrate
Jackie’s homecoming, she really did not want to
attend. Seeing the yellow ribbons, she kept thinking
the soldiers deserve these, not me.
Only six months later she returned to Iraq.
And lest our students walk away
from the experience thinking of the
Seigenthalers as merely elegant
hosts, we were sometimes regaled
with stories of how the couple met in
front of The Parthenon in Nashville’s
Centennial Park when Delores Watson
was a young woman headed for a
career as a singer. John Seigenthaler
said he heard her voice in the park
one day and he knew he had to meet
her. The Seigenthalers were married
for almost 60 years.
John Seigenthaler’s voice is
silenced with his passing, but his
legacy will continue to have significant
meaning for journalists and journalism
education.
President’s
Perspective
rmed with two desktop computers, a laptop, an
iPad and an iPhone, I spend a lot of time online.
Having been in journalism my entire working life, I
use this technology for business communications,
writing and research and to keep up with an everexpanding array of news from home and abroad.
But I still love printed newspapers, magazines
and books. There is a quiet, contemplative quality
to print that enables me to absorb complex
information more effectively than I am able to
online. When the news grows especially grim
and complicated — as it has this year with wars
raging simultaneously at one point in Ukraine,
Gaza, Israel, Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists
beheading American journalists — I turn to
quality print publications seeking background,
perspective and understanding.
This past summer the chaotic world led me to a
shelf in my library where I keep the collected works
of my favorite reporter, A.J. Liebling, the talented
correspondent whose work graced the pages of
the New Yorker magazine from l935 until a few
months after his death in December 1963, when I
was a student at Columbia University’s Graduate
School of Journalism.
I was introduced to Liebling’s journalism in 1961
when a collection of his “Wayward Press” columns
on the newspaper business was published by
Ballantine Bo