Global Journalism Review

Pioneering at London's City University

By our universities reporter

As City University celebrated 30 years of  journalism, its first course director recalled the days when the media had  appeared highly sceptical about any contribution a university could make to  “the trade”.  However, a number of leading figures in journalism had taken a keen interest in the project and helped to ensure its remarkably rapid  acceptance.  

It took several  years, but eventually the bias against anyone who had been  involved in the training schemes for entrants to provincial journalism began to fade.  It took longer to escape  from the "horror" of having an outside body from that same sector,  the NCTJ, laying down rules for the entry and the examinations for the departure of suitable students. 

It is not so long ago since a senior member of the City staff told this writer it was “disgraceful” that such a body should have had a role n the development there.  To suggest that the NCTJ had in fact proved a necessary and useful bridge on the road to a successful university department cut no ice.   However, all trace of that attitude, the lack of understanding of a  necessary evolutionary process, had apparently disappeared by the time of this happy anniversary at the university on October  5, 2006.   

Tom Welsh, the first director, was welcomed by Adrian Monck,  the current head of journalism, and recalled that Harry Evans (now Sir Harold), then editor of the  Sunday Times, launched the course at the offices of the newspaper, and later  became honorary professor.

Many of those present did not know or had forgotten the story of Tom’s own career, before and after City. He had worked on the News Chronicle and the Guardian  before going into teaching, first at Harlow on the early NCTJ courses for graduate entrants,.  After City,  he edited a lively daily paper,  the North-Western Evening Mail, for eight  years.  He then set up and edited for ten years the newsletter Media Lawyer, now  owned by the Press Association. A law graduate, he edits McNae’s Essential Law  for Journalists and is now working on the 19th edition, to be published by Oxford University Press next year.
Tom referred to his original “very active advisory committee," which  included Brian  MacArthur, then news editor of The Times, who was still associated with the course, and Jim Brennan, a veteran  in journalism training and now editor of the  website publication Global Journalism Review, who was present at the  reception (and possibly the oldest there). 

He continued: “It is usual on such occasions as this was  for those involved to say: ‘We never dreamt when starting this thing that it was going to grow so big.’   I don’t believe anyone involved in  1976 thought that. We were all aware that we were at the start of something very big, and in the succeeding years we have watched with keen interest the growth and development of journalism at City and the way in which it has taken  its place of pre-eminence among the centres of excellence in the education and  training of those involved in the media trade. Our congratulations to all  those who have achieved this.”

He said the first year of the course was  very hard work. He read a letter from Sir Edward Parkes, the City  Vice-Chancellor “on whose watch the course was set up”, regretting that he  could not attend and asking for his greetings to be conveyed to anyone at the  reception who was involved in the early days.   Tom paid tribute to David  Jenkins, “the academic who did the hard work of persuading the university  senate to run the course, and who was then head of the centre under which the  courses operated”.  Another important figure, from  the very earliest stage, was the late John Dodge, who had been director of the NCTJ, and became head at City when Tom left.
Also  welcomed to the reception were Jeremy Tunstall, former  professor of sociology, who was closely involved with the course, and Mary Harris, the course’s administrator, “who kept the show on the road”.  The many others present included the former head, Professor Hugh Stephenson, and several professors and visiting professors, including Roy Greenslade,  Marcel Berlins, Richard Redden, Robert Jones, and professional associates including Jon Slattery of Press Gazette.  (The university was unable to provide a guest list in time for this article).

Tom  said that too many of the major figures who have been closely associated, and would have loved  this occasion, had died. They included four who were all famous in their own fields:  Harry Butler, Tom Baistow, John Dodge and Frank Edmead.  A much loved figure was Henry Clother, who was not in at the start,  but joined as a lecturer in the second year and, as tutor in  charge of the newspaper course for 13 years, played a significant role in its development.
Tom said that 1976 was  probably the happiest year of his working life. One special reason was the students: “Such very nice people!”
Eight of the 13 students on  the first postgraduate course attended the reception and, later, a convivial  meal at an Islington restaurant with Tom Welsh and Mary Harris.   
NB.  From the obit for Henry Clother in The Times:  “Through his support for the  centre’s first head, Tom Welsh, he was instrumental in ensuring that its courses developed along the lines which have made it one of the best known  teaching centres for journalism in the country.”
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Were you there ?

Martin Luther's 'I have a dream' speech

Reporters at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC,  on August 28, 1963, are invited to make contact for a reunion.  Here is a reminder.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, the African American civil rights movement reached its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr.,
addressed more than 200,000 people attending the March on Washington. The
demonstrators were there to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination.

The peaceful rally was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever
seen, and MLK  was the last speaker. With the statue of Abraham Lincoln towering behind him, he evoked the rhetorical talents he had developed as a Baptist preacher to articulate how the "Negro is still not free."

He told of the struggle ahead, stressing the importance of continued action and nonviolent protest. Coming to the end of his prepared text (which, like other speakers that day, he had limited to seven minutes), he was overwhelmed by the moment and launched into an improvised sermon.He told the hushed crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed."

He began the refrain that made the speech one of the best known in U.S. history,
second only to Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address.  "I have a dream," he boomed
over the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument,
"that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created
equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down
together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state
of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a
dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
a dream today."  MLK  had used the "I have a dream" theme before, in a handful of
stump speeches, but never with the force and effectiveness of that hot August
day in Washington. He equated the civil rights movement with the highest and
noblest ideals of the American tradition, and for many Americans--white and
black--the importance of racial equality was seen with a new and blinding
clarity.

He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of racial harmony:

"I have a dream that I have climbed the mountain and I have seen the promised land.

 I may not get there with you, but I have a dream.  When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are
free at last!'

In the year after the March on Washington, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax and thus a barrier to poor African American voters in the South; and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and
education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. In October 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968, he was shot to death while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.  He was 39 years old.

Memories of Paris, August 1945

Paris was liberated by the French on August 26 1945, with a triumphant march down the Champs d'Elysees led by the Free French General Charles de Gaulle. It  had fallen to the Germans on June 14 1940. During those years there were many reporters in the field, of several nationalities, and many must have survived.  GJR has been asked to contact as many as possible - of only to say Hello, not to mention  hopefully a few reunions, in Paris, London, New York and elsewhere. Contact Jim Brennan (in the army at that time - 1st Parachute Battalion, and latterly on War Office attachment) by email brenmedia@btinternet.com 

 Meeting in Dublin

Dublin is high on our list. A caller asks about Joe Joyce, last met when he was at the Irish Times 30 years ago, and later heard of as a successful writer of thrillers (The Trigger, pub 1990, to hand)).  JB writes: Joe was also a stringer for the Guardian and like me, doing two or three jobs at once. I was subbing on the paper, but also moonlighting on reporting and research. Joe took me for lunch with a senior diplomat for a backgrounder, pointed me to Sinn Fein headquarters (to my surprise, at that time, in the 1970s, an easily accessible office on a street not far from the Cathedral), and also to the press bench at Sinn Fein's annual meeting in Liberty Hall). It was also in Dublin that I met Robert Fisk, who was to become a distinguished reporter on war in the Middle East.

Former classmates

Two emails came from former classmates of Michael White, who became the Guardian's political editor and is also now an assistant editor. The two inquirers were on a college course more than 30 years ago with Michael. Former classmates of another year, at another college, include one who wants a reunion including Michael Wooldridge, who became BBC religious correspondent, then Far East corr., and when last spotted recently was a world reporter, at the UN in New York.

Tony Miles was the boss of Mirror Group Newspapers BM (Before Maxwell), and an old colleague wants to drink to those happy days, if a few can get together. He last heard of Tony Miles as having gone to the USA. (Tony Miles was also a junior reporter with Jim Brennan, many years ago)

Going back earlier than that, there was a call from colleagues of Geoff Harris, Donald Saunders, Vic Swain, Tommy Mapp (who emigrated to Salinas, California), Derek Fitzgibbon, Ken Edgill and others who were young reporters at the Middlesex Advertiser about 50 years ago. Both Don Saunders and Vic Swain moved on first to the Brighton Argus and then the Daily Telegraph, and Geoff Harris became a fulltime lecturer in journalism.

The Yorkshire Evening News (Leeds) lost its battle against the Evening Post a long time ago, but a veteran hopeful from those days wants to meet Jack Crossley (recently writing autobiographical bits for magazines about his Leeds apprenticeship), and others there at the same time, including sub-editor Jack Childs.

From an earlier generation at the Times, in the old Printing House Square, there are inquiries about a chief sub, Leon Pilpel, an assistant editor, Ernest Russell, and Norman Fowler, a reporter who became an MP, a  minister in a Tory government, and then editor of the Birmingham Post.

Any responses to the above will be passed on, and posted here when the time is right.  Email brenmedia@btinternet.com.  See also Press Gazette for the UK, and Editor & Publisher (New York) for USA.

Copyright 1995-2006 Brennan Publications