Portal:1990s
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Missouri Journalism in the 1990s
A new commitment to turning the School’s graduate students and faculty into research leaders characterized the 90s. Five endowed chairs, two prominent research centers and several six-figure research grants later, the School was well on its way to success. Meanwhile, the International Programs office gained strength, and the Columbia Missourian ventured into new territory – the World Wide Web.
Crime Coverage in Rural Missouri
Submitted by Paula (Longtin) Spring, BJ ’71
Having spent most of my journalistic career reporting small town, rural Missouri news, I never expected to be part of “a big story.” But in 1997 here in Benton County, where I serve as both the local radio station news director and anchor and write for the local newspaper, I found myself in the middle of that coveted opportunity to report major news.
It centered around the search for Alis Ben Johns, the suspect in the murders of three Missouri residents that took place from the fall of 1996 through the late winter months of 1997. The hunt for Johns became what has been called the largest manhunt in Missouri history. Finding the third victim’s stolen car abandoned in a creek in Benton County meant the story was in my backyard. And as 350 law enforcement officers came to our rural Ozarks area to hunt the woods for Johns and his female companion, the search stretched into almost five weeks. He was finally found in a vacant vacation home, shot and arrested. He has over the past 10 years been tried and convicted in each of the three murder cases. His skill as a woodsman made this search an unbelievable one with a myriad of sidelines to relate over the weeks. News media, representing those from Reuters to 48 Hours, were here to tell the tale. I had a chance to be interviewed and also filmed doing my reporting job here by 48 Hours during their stay in Benton County.
I believe my long-term journalistic career helped me to work with visiting media, provide them with the local information and resources they needed to do their job, as well as respond to reporting the local news as it unfolded in this story. My confidence to suddenly be put in a position like this began with my training and education I received at Missouri while earning my degree there. Stepping up to the plate for this story of major impact became easier because of my foundation of sound skills gained at Missouri. It also helped me to keep my priorities straight as I not only reported a challenging story, but also lived it myself in my own backyard.
School of Journalism's Training Useful in Various Fields
Submitted by Jennifer Murphy Romig, BA, BJ '95
Coming out of J-School, I went right into law school and then into practice at a law firm in Atlanta. This career path fit my somewhat self-serving reason for applying to J-School in the first place: that its national reputation and demanding curriculum would shape me into an attractive law-school candidate and would prepare me to succeed in law school. And it did both of those things.
But the J-School has provided me with much more, and year after year I find myself returning to what I learned there. After several years practicing law, I chose a career switch into academia and specifically back into the field of writing. For the past seven years, I have taught legal writing, research and advocacy at the Emory University School of Law. The training I received in J-School was rigorous, practical, and creative yet structured. In short, it gave me the perfect mindset for helping to train new lawyers. The teachers I learned from at the J-School—both the “big names” and the graduate assistants—have been important role models for me in developing my own teaching persona. The fact that the J-School required economics and statistics as prerequisites has also proven invaluable, enabling me to follow the trend in legal studies toward empirical research and economic analysis.
Not long after I entered academia, my teaching work led me to become a consultant and writing coach for practicing lawyers. Here again, the lessons imparted in J-School have been invaluable, particularly what I learned about working with narrative structure and editing sentences for sophistication. These are just a few of the writing topics that practicing lawyers both need and enjoy as they continue their professional growth as writers. In working with lawyers, I have found myself going back to required texts and even class notes from J-School classes, and in many cases that information remains pertinent and useful to legal writing today.
In my personal life I have not been able to escape the J-School either. While attending law school, I found myself beckoned by idea of writing for the law school’s weekly newsletter. Finally during second year I joined the staff as a feature writer, where I met the student editor whom I would eventually marry. Now I edit the parent newsletter for our children’s preschool, and he co-edits the State Bar’s newsletter for young lawyers in Georgia. What we share in our respective endeavors is something transmitted to me through the J-School’s approach: a hunger for information and a desire to share it; a pleasure in the teamwork needed to conceptualize and produce our publications; and pride in the final product.
In sum, although I am not able to attend the Centennial events in Columbia, the J-School provided some of my most formative professional moments. What I learned at the J-School will continue to sustain me professionally and personally, and I am thankful that I can call myself a graduate.
