P01.V52.I4
black
cyan
magenta
yellow
SPRING 2012
Page 4A
Adviser Update
A way to learn a proud and difficult craft
By RICHARD J. LEVINE
M
y wife and I have lived in
the historic college town of
Princeton, N.J., since 1980. In
recent years, with more discretionary time, we have been able
to take greater advantage of the
rich cultural offerings just a few
minutes away.
One of our favorite venues
is Theatre Intime, based in the
200-seat Hamilton Murray Theater in the heart of the Princeton
University campus. What makes
Theatre Intime so special is that
it has been a student-run organization since its founding by a
small group of undergraduates in
1919. Today, even as the university’s programs in the performing
arts continue to expand, students
remain “solely responsible for
every aspect of the theater – from
acting to directing, fundraising to
administrating,” according to the
Intime website.
That independence combined
with the energy, creativity and
talent of the young company often
results in engaging, memorable
theater, and we frequently prefer
it to commercial offerings.
Yet my fondness for Theatre
Intime also springs from the fact
that it affords Princeton undergraduates an experience similar
to that afforded me by The Cornell Daily Sun more than a half
century ago in another college
town, Ithaca, N.Y. — a way to
learn a proud and difficult craft
by doing rather than by listening to lectures, taking notes and
reading.
John V. Fleming, an emeritus
Princeton professor of English
and comparative literature, discussed this idea in a short essay
about Theatre Intime’s 90th anniversary a few years ago. Observing that “the student organization
that most resembles Intime” is
The Daily Princetonian, he wrote:
“Intime and ‘the Prince’ are
alike in that they are comprehensive enterprises. The newspaper
has been sometimes good, and
sometimes not so good. Some
writers have been better than others, some editors more competent
than others. But day in and day
out, a group of students continues
to put out a daily newspaper, facing in however compact a version
most of the challenges facing the
DJNF PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
Richard J. Levine
is president of the board of directors of the Dow Jones News Fund
Inc. In five decades with Dow
Jones & Co., he has served as vice
president for news and staff development, executive editor of Dow
Jones Newswires, vice president
of information services, editorial
director of electronic publishing
and Washington correspondent
and columnist for The Wall Street
Journal. He holds a B.S. from
Cornell University and an M.S. from
the Columbia University Graduate
School of Journalism. E-mail: [email protected].
Founded in 1880, the Cornell Daily Sun bills itself as “one of the nation’s oldest daily college newspapers.”
Those years spent working from the tired, battered Sun offices on the
second floor of an off-campus walkup deepened my understanding of and
devotion to quality journalism, provided a firm grounding in reporting and
writing, and offered invaluable lessons about life and my chosen craft.
people who produce the New York
Times or the Boston Globe.
“So it is also with the students
at Intime. For Intime is not a
play, a course, a seminar, or a
production. It is a whole theater.
And the student responsibility for
the complete management of this
venerable artistic institution is its
most precious dimension.”
As my 50th Cornell reunion
approaches, that is how I view my
four years on the staff of The Cornell Daily Sun. Founded in 1880,
the Sun bills itself as “one of the
nation’s oldest daily college newspapers.” And it proudly proclaims
that “it is and has always been
completely independent from Cornell University” and “is entirely
student-run.”
For me, it was so important an
experience that in my one-page
“life story” for the Class of 1962
reunion yearbook I wrote, “In
truth, I majored in The Cornell
Daily Sun, spending scores of
hours weekly as a reporter, sports
editor and managing editor.”
Those years spent working
from the tired, battered Sun
offices on the second floor of an
off-campus walkup deepened my
understanding of and devotion
to quality journalism, provided a
firm grounding in reporting and
writing, and offered invaluable
lessons about life and my chosen
craft.
An early lesson was that you
have to make hard choices and
set priorities. In my first weeks
on campus, I was simultaneously
competing for the Sun and for a
spot on the tennis team. I wanted
to do both but soon came to realize I could manage only one. Reasoning that I was a better writer
than tennis player, I focused on
the Sun, made the staff and was
elected sports editor in my sophomore year.
That position produced another lesson.
In the fall of 1960, George Kepford “Lefty” James was in his 14th
year as Cornell’s head football
coach. The team was struggling in
the still-new Ivy League with its
highly publicized commitment to
de-emphasize football. Going into
the traditional last game against
Penn, at Franklin Field in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving Day,
Cornell had won only two games
and lost six.
On the Tuesday night before
the Thursday game, I learned
from good sources that Cornell
was going to fire James for not
winning, despite the Ivy League’s
new focus on building the charac-
ter of student athletes. It was a
big story, a national story. I had a
clean beat. And I blew it.
I allowed the powerful athletic
director to convince me not to
publish the news in the Wednesday morning Sun because it
would be harmful to team morale.
As events quickly demonstrated, I
had made a big mistake.
The veteran sports editor of
the Ithaca Journal