A. Cars

     The office of financial aid at St. Mary's University calls and says it has a release of great importance. You go there and C.L. Braverman, the director of the office, says there is a new policy on the use of cars by students receiving aid. He tells you:

     We've had nothing but trouble with cars here. Students ask us for help and when we get a financial statement from them, we find they have a new Chevy or a Porsche.
     How can we justify aid to students whose college money goes not for tuition, room, board or books, but for car payments and oil and gas?
     We now have $250,000 a year for aid and about twice that amount in low-interest loans. Last year, 220 of the 600 freshmen sought help. Well, that averages to a little more than $1,000 a student for scholarships; and we estimate costs per year are $25,000, minimum.
     Then we'd hear about these students with cars. The system was not equitable.

     He describes the new policy, adopted unanimously by the student aid committee:

     The following regulation, to take effect next fall, pertaining to the use of motor vehicles by financial-aid recipients, reflects the concern of the committee that limited aid resources might be awarded to students who would utilize these funds for the maintenance of a vehicle for personal convenience, rather than for educational expenses. The regulation, however, is designed to give financial aid recipients the opportunity to have at their disposal a motor vehicle if they are willing to experience a reduction in gift scholarship.

     The regulation is as follows:

Students receiving financial aid may have a motor vehicle at their disposal while attending college provided they register the vehicle or vehicles in their names at the Buildings and Grounds office, and provided that they accept a reduction in their financial aid at a rate of $200 per semester per vehicle.
     Failure to register a vehicle may result in the loss of all financial aid and/or revocation of the privilege of college vehicle registration and/or operating privileges and suspension from college.
     Any attempt, plan, device, combination or conspiracy, such as registering a vehicle in another's name, arranging a temporary sale, parking a vehicle off campus, designed to circumvent or that results in the circumvention of the above regulation may result in the loss of all financial aid and/or revocation of the privilege of college vehicle registration and/or operating privileges and suspension from college for all others involved in the combination or conspiracy.
     The Director of Financial Aid may grant exemption from the above for financial-aid recipients who (1) have necessary employment off campus requiring the use of a personal vehicle; (2) have academic assignment, such as the off-campus Teaching Practicum; (3) have physical disability; or (4) are commuters who reside at their homes with no other available transportation.

     Write 250 to 300 words.

B. Criticism

     You are told that Frederick Cole, a retired editor of newspapers in Florida, California and Michigan, is in the city to serve as an adviser to the local newspaper, which plans to revamp its makeup and coverage and to go online. Your editor tells you that Cole has strong feelings about journalism education and he tells you to interview Cole for a 350- to 450-word piece.
     Cole is 73, never went to college, was a successful city hall, legislative and White House reporter by the time he was 30 and then became city editor of The Chicago Sun. He went on to the Houston Chronicle and then the San Francisco Examiner, and he was executive editor of a group of newspapers in the Chicago area, the Atlas Newspapers, since absorbed by the other newspapers in the area. He retired a year ago. He had a reputation as a tough editor.
     Your editor tells you that it would be a good idea to find out as much as you can about journalism education before seeing Cole, and you first make a list of material you want to dig up in references: the number of students now enrolled in journalism schools and their majors (advertising, broadcast, communication, news-editorial, public relations); the number enrolled in past years; the number of accredited schools; recent articles about journalism education.
     You next make up a list of questions for Cole. You have heard that he thinks journalism students are not well-prepared for their jobs. You list questions along those lines.
     You then interview Cole at his hotel. He is white-haired, has a ruddy complexion, is thin and of medium height, is wearing a blue suit. He has a strong grip when you shake hands and he often smiles, as if to reassure you that he is not really the ogre he is made out to be.

     I still think of myself as an editor, and I talk that way. Can't get the business out of my system. I was a copy boy when I was 16 and I never graduated from high school. But in my days, eighth grade was terminal. A high school boy studied Latin, algebra and read the plays of Shakespeare.
     Anyway, the newsroom was an education. We had sports reporters who knew the archaeology of Greece, and city editors who could recite French poetry. Not many. But enough to tell a kid that there was more to this business than fires and murders. I learned it all.
     I'm not sure that youngsters take to learning the way we did, and this is showing up in the young men and women who come into the newsroom as beginners. Editors and educators have a common objective: We want to strive for optimum quality in our newspaper. And to do that we need each other.
     What we need to do is candidly appraise the weaknesses of today's journalism education—and then do something about it.
     Too many applicants lack a working knowledge of the English language. Some can't spell.
     Half of the aspirants who come into my office think a board of supervisors is plural. And they see nothing wrong with a sentence such as "The Chamber of Commerce will hold their annual meeting tomorrow night."
     Many of them can't type 30 words a minute. Their spelling is atrocious. I've found that fewer than half of them can spell such commonly used words as accommodate, commitment and judgment.
     They are still being taught that a good lead includes the Five W's and an H. There's little evidence they ever were taught that a reader's degree of understanding drops off dramatically for each word over 20 in a sentence.
     We're getting too many hopefuls who lack a background in economics, literature, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. They know little of local government. And they can't even report to the office on time.
     Are the applicants we're getting imaginative? They think they are because, when using words of attribution, they come up with every word they can think of but the one that usually is the best to use: said.
     That's not the kind of creative thinking we're looking for. We want young reporters who have enough imagination to go after the stories that are not usually done and to write them with a style and flair that will excite our readers.
     And none of them can cope with the pressure of deadlines. When they must write fast, they tie up.
     Sure, we expect a lot because we don't label our stories—written by a beginner, intermediate or advanced reporter. Our readers pay for a professionally done product.
     How important is spelling to today's editors? We wouldn't even consider hiring a reporter who couldn't pass our spelling test. If he can't spell, we don't care how many prizes he won in college.
     My advice to journalism educators is:

• You should be turning out graduates who want jobs in the general practice of journalism rather than specialization. That will come later.
• If students can't dig, write or spell, counsel them—or flunk them out. You'll be doing them a favor, for we don't want them.

     Maybe it's time to be more demanding about applicants for the journalism major. I'd make all students who want to study journalism take spelling, punctuation and grammar tests as well as force them to write a story from a set of facts so that we can see whether they can use the right word in the right place.
     Many students are going to be terribly disappointed because they simply are in the wrong field. Journalism requires an outlook, a mental discipline, a curiosity and, above all, a willingness to work hard day and night.

C. Galloway

     You have been sent to interview a reporter, Joseph L. Galloway Jr., who will be speaking tomorrow night to journalism students at the local college. You have been given his background and have quotes from your interview. Galloway is well-built and of medium height, has close-cropped hair. Write 400 words.

Background

     Joseph L. Galloway Jr. became a UPI correspondent in 1961. Before going to Moscow as a bureau manager, he was manager for Southeast Asia with headquarters in Singapore. He also has served in New Delhi, Jakarta and Tokyo. Before going to Asia, he worked for UPI in Kansas City and Topeka, Kansas.
     He was a combat correspondent in Vietnam, about which he has written a book, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his war coverage in 1965. He was among the last American correspondents in Saigon before it fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975.
     He was born Nov. 13, 1941, in Bryan, Tex., and attended Victoria College in his native state. He is a media consultant in Washington. His quotes:

     Given the time and material, a person who has learned the basics of bricklaying can build a grand cathedral. Without those basics his structures will turn out to be hollow and dangerous shells.
     It is no different for the reporter.
     A good police-beat reporter can cover the White House, and perhaps more of them should.
     The basics for the reporter from station house to White House are accuracy and fairness—honest information honestly conveyed.
     The reporter owes a lifelong debt to his editor, his readers and, above all, to himself. The ledger on that debt is updated and balanced every time he touches a keyboard or a microphone.
     He owes all parties the debt of full, fair, balanced coverage of a story which he should approach with personal interest, personal knowledge and a personal commitment to the truth.
     There are no routine stories, only stories that have been covered routinely.
     Beginning reporters are traditionally "broken in" with a tour of writing obituaries, considered a small, ho-hum, back-row operation of no seeming consequence.
     What nonsense. What an opportunity.
     The obits are probably read by more people with greater attention to detail than any other section of a newspaper. Nowhere else is error or omission more likely to be noticed.
     A good reporter gives each orbit careful, accurate handling and searches in the stack for the one or two that can be brought to life.
     "Veteran of WWII," the funeral-home sheet says. Did he make the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy? "Taught junior high English for 43 years." Find some former pupils who can still quote entire pages of Longfellow because somehow she made it live and sing for them.
     Look around. See who's likely to go before long and interview him. Few people can resist the opportunity to tell of their life and times. The good reporter finds them, listens to them, and learns from them.
     Whatever the assignment, look for the people, listen to their stories, study them—and in your copy let them move, speak, act naturally. Put no high-flown words in mouths that never spoke them. You write of real people, not puppets to be yanked around from paragraph to paragraph, and you owe them their reality.
     Check your facts. The more startling the claim, statement or allegation, the more attention should be given to double or triple checking for error or misinterpretation.
     A good reporter is a student all his life. Each new assignment demands a crash course in the theory and practice of yet another profession or system. From station house to courthouse to state house or White House, you have to find out what the official sitting in the chair knows, and you cannot recognize the truth from a position of blind ignorance.
     Reporting involves long hours of listening to those who do know the ins and outs of the story, digging in the morgue files, filling up another shelf in the bookcase at home.
     Then there is always the continuing study of your job as a reporter and writer whose challenging subject is the changing and unchanging conditions of mankind. For that study, you must read.
     The prescription "to read" by itself does not convey what I mean.
     If in this electronic era you are not accustomed to it, then you must train yourself to gulp down the printed word with the true thirst of someone who has covered the last 15 miles of Death Valley on his belly.
     Read for your life.
     Read every newspaper that comes under your eye for style, for content, for ideas, for pleasure. And the books, my God, the books. The world of modern publishing has a 500-year head start on you and it is pulling further ahead every year.
     Never mind your transcript or your résumé. Let me see your bookshelves at home and your library card.
     In a long career, a reporter's assignments may change radically and often, or he may spend his lifetime on a single beat in one town. That is a matter of personal choice, opportunity and chance. What never changes is the basic debt owed and the only way to settle it.
     I served my apprenticeship on a small Texas daily, sitting at the left hand of a fine, conscientious reporter who handled the city government beat. He had been there for years then and today—years later—he is still there. In amazement, I heard him turn down job offers from big city dailies. He knew and encouraged my own ambitions, but his ambition was simply to continue providing honest, informative coverage of his beat.
     His explanation:
     "You may go and cover the great capitals of the world and the great conflicts, and that's an important job. But unless the people of this town, and all the other towns like it, know and understand the workings of their own city hall, how can you expect them to understand what is happening 6,000 miles away? Unless there's someone doing my job right, your job is hopeless."