Adviser Update Spring 2012 | страница 4

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