 Hey, my name is Tom Pyle. I was an instructor through a full professor at SOC, SOSC, SOU from 1969 through 2004. I officially retired in 1998, but I did six years of part-time after that, so about 30-some years. And primarily taught journalism, also got into areas such as freedom of speech, and I was advisor to student publications, both the newspaper and the yearbook. Well, the technology was, change was huge, because in advising the publications, I had to deal with buying equipment and so on, trying to be up on equipment. And we're moving from typewriters and what was called letterpress printing into computers and paste-up printing, and then on total computer, managed things. And I didn't have much knowledge in that. And so a lot of the times, actually, I was relying on the students to tell me what was going on as far as the advancements in computers. The SISC was printed at the daily tidings. The SISC offices were on campus, and they moved around, well, actually just twice, that I'm aware of, from the basement of Brit into the basement of the Stevenson Union. But they, being a student publication, as was the Raider yearbook, the offices were in student activities buildings. I remember the first computer, I can't say for sure the year, but it was a something 64. Commodore, I don't think it was quite right, but it was something along that line. And I bought that solely on the recommendation of one of the students on the staff. And with, with advising publications, I was pretty much in charge of all the finances. And as the SISC became more modernized, and we did have to do an awful lot of buying of computerized equipment, our first machine that we actually had on campus, other than the little computers, was a, I can't remember what you actually called it, but it was a machine that we bought from the daily tidings that would print out the stories and so forth on paper. And so you could be, they could be pasted up and then photographed instead of using hot metal letterpress type. And so I had a big battle with the purchasing office over that, because they always wanted three bids on everything. And I said, well, this is the only one available and it's in town and I can't get three bids. They said, oh, well, okay. But anyhow, that was a major issue all the time, trying to keep the publications, you know, efficiently operated and moving into a kind of a computer age. And actually after I left being the advisor to the SISC and the Raider, it was taken over by people in the, what would you call it, promotions part of the student union, the people who do all the posters and brochures and everything else. And they were all using computers. And so that's the advising process really moved much more to the technical side of it, as opposed to dealing with personnel and content and things like that. And to this day, well, the paper is still published, but it's online. It's not in print. But when I first got on campus, like I say, the paper was letter pressed and it was printed off campus. And the students would work virtually all night, the night before publication, two, three in the morning, even later was not uncommon. For a short time, it was a twice a week publication. And so just once a week, which was almost most of the time. And when it was twice a week, it was even tougher to try to put out a paper and go to class and everything else they were supposed to be doing. And of course, it was a much smaller paper twice a week. So once a week made more sense. But when I first got on campus, I guess I could mention one of the funny things that happened. I was within the first couple days or so that I was on campus. This was in July of 1969. I parked my car on a gravel parking lot behind Central and Taylor Halls. And I heard this voice. This voice says, young man, young man. And I turned around. I didn't see any other young men. So I said, oh, me? He says, yes, you. He says, you're missing a lug nut. I said, oh, and he points at my car. I looked down and I think it was a left rear tire wheel. It was missing a lug nut. And so I said, well, okay, thanks. He went his way to Taylor Hall and I went my way to Central Hall. And I got to know that man well over the next, actually, I still know him very well to this day. And it's been a lot of years. But I went on into Central Hall and told my new office partner about it. And he said, oh, yes, I know who that is. My office partner was a man named Dave Allen. I think his actual given name was David Borum. But he happened to be in radio. And so I think he took Allen as a surname, but I'm not 100% positive of that. Probably shouldn't even repeat it. But Dave had just founded KSOR radio within the previous two months. I think it was founded in May. And my office, I was moved into Sharon office with Dave. And I think also with the new service director who had just been hired. And with eight or 10 students who are now working on KSOR having just put it on the air. It was a madhouse. It was something else. I'm brand new faculty. Remember, I have no idea what's going on. And Dave's trying to put the station together. Luckily, it was not during school when I got there in July. So that helped a lot. But it was quite an experience having all those students around trying to figure out how to run a radio station. And it was student run. Dave founded it. But the whole idea was to have a student operated station on campus. And it most certainly was. For a number of years. And then it shifted away from student involvement to what it became over the next 40 years. And then actually now they're becoming, they're bringing in more students now. Much closer relationship than it had been in that huge gap between Dave and the new director, Paul. But anyhow, that's another story. But when I came on campus, we moved here from Colorado. My wife and I, she was pregnant. So we decided to come out a couple months before school started. So to make it easier for her. And as it turned out, we had registration day on September 21st when everything was not computerized. Students filled out what they wanted to have in classes and then either got it or didn't. All on a piece of paper. And we were also trying to sell yearbooks. Get people to sign up to buy a yearbook that day. So we had registration for classes. Trying to sell your books. It's pouring rain. And my wife goes to the hospital and has a baby. And I was panicked as to what was going on here. So our oldest son was born on registration day. So it was kind of wild. But I think that kind of covers my arrival at SOU or SOC at the time. I was independent. I had no department connection. And neither did Dave. And then after, I really don't know how long it was, possibly a year, I hitched up with the speech communication department. Actually, I think Dave was connected with that department as well. So speech and theater. And at that time. And I thought that made sense because of being media-oriented and the radio. That's right, Dave was part of that department. And then later on it was changed to speech communication and then to communication. And that was my affiliation. But for a little while I was a totally independent person. Which was very unfortunate. It was difficult. Not really knowing who to turn to in a lot of ways. But it all worked out eventually. I think I had my choice basically. It was either going to be speech theater or English. And I felt I think because of Dave and the radio that I thought the speech was a better way to go. It was a good choice. A really great faculty. And as a very ironic coincidental thing, a woman who had an office directly across the hall from me, once I moved out of KSOR, down the hall about 50 feet to where speech communication was. A woman who was directly across from me was named Karen Henderson at the time. And she was one of my little sister's best friends in high school in Boulder, Colorado. So you never know. And her father and my uncle were both printers. And they actually worked together for a little while at Denver Post as printers. So it's a small world. And Karen and I are still very good friends. But a lot of my job, well, both the newspaper and the yearbook were part of my teaching load. I got two credits out of the 16 that we were required to have for the newspaper, two more for their yearbook. So basically I had three or so real classes and then the publications as well. And the newspaper was, I think I might have been hired perhaps to try to steer the newspaper in a different direction. I was never actually told that there was any problems. But when I got here, I realized that the paper the previous couple of years had been very, very liberal, very outspoken, anti-war. The editor was promoting the Students for Democratic Society chapter on campus. And I found out later on in talking to the editor once he was former editor that there really was no chapter. It was just he and a couple of friends. But anyhow, but the paper was quite liberal, outspoken. And I came on and the president was well, was in transition. The president who officially hired me was Elmo Stevenson, but he had just retired and Jim or James Sowers was coming in. So Sowers and I came in at the same time. And then the new editor of the Cisco had been on the staff before. He wasn't quite as, I hate to use the term radical, but as energetic in that direction as the previous editors. So the paper toned itself down in a lot of ways. I didn't really have anything to do with it. My philosophy was, and always has, but it always will be that student publication on a public university campus is that has freedom of the press. In fact, that's what the Supreme Court says too. So I have some backing on that and needed it at times. But it was their paper. I advised in a lot of different ways, often dealing with content, but I never control ever. And I wouldn't, if they would have asked me to, I would have quit. And they never did ask me to directly. One president did indirectly many times, but most of the time it didn't happen. But the paper right off the bat, we had a columnist, student columnist, who was trying to write a column that was very cute. He tried to emulate a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle named Herb Kane, who kind of called it dot dot dot journalism. A lot of gossip and a lot of just stuff that people really interested, were interested in but didn't have a whole lot of content. And so this our student tried to write this column and it was well done at times. But he put one small mention in the paper one day that a certain professor had just returned from a trip overseas. And as I'm trying to be nice about this, as his initials would indicate, he gets around. And the initials had some reference to a sexual disease that gets around. And I'll say it about that. The comment was it was very clear what the student meant. And it was not nice. It was perhaps even insulting. Was it true? No, it was not true at all because the reference was to something that had only to do with his initials. But the connotation was very, very negative and nasty. And so the professor came into the student, into the Cisco office, which was in the basement of Britt Hall. And he barges in and he's very upset, red faced. And I'm in there and I think one or two other students are in there. We're just chatting, which is a lot of what I did with the paper that would sit around and chat. But anyhow, he comes in and he says, where's this Warner? Jim Warner was the student's name. Where's this Warner kid? And I said, well, he's not here. And somebody else said, no, he's in class or something. Where's the editor? She's not here either. She's in class. Where's the advisor? Well, I happen to be sitting on top of a table at the time chatting with the students. And so I am here or something like that. At that point, I was very red faced as well. And so he was upset, obviously. And I said, Sir, I can't do anything about that. I'll talk to him and point out that it was ill advised and so forth. But I can't control what he says or did say. And I'm sorry about it. And he's grumbled and left. And we all looked at each other like, what was that? I was 28 years old at the time. I was not exactly well versed in how to handle something like that. So that was my first experience right off the bat with a SISCU. Certainly thereafter, maybe a year or so later, a different editor was very active in on-campus things. And he decided that the newspaper should evaluate faculty. Student evaluations of faculty across the country were becoming the thing. And he decided that the SISCU should initiate a process where the SISCU staff, well actually a bunch of other volunteers that helped the SISCU staff would evaluate faculty members and print the evaluations in the newspaper. And so they did. And we talked a lot about how it should be handled. And they came up with a, I thought it was a pretty good process both using the statistics, rating sheets, and personal interviews where they would interview the faculty member and several students. The first person they interviewed was Dave Allen, happened to be my office partner. And that was a setup. We agreed that that would be probably the first person to interview, would be more comfortable that way. And the editor and I both felt that that would be a good positive way to start off the process. And so it came out and nobody said much about it. And then I don't remember the numbers of who was next and who was after that. But very shortly thereafter a professor was evaluated. And virtually all the evaluations were very negative. Said all he does is talk about fishing and this and that. And so the issue came before the faculty senate. And some folks, some professors wanted the paper sent sword. Others wanted it sent assured. Some said that something ought to be done about the advisor being a faculty member. I shouldn't allow this to happen. And it was debated in the faculty senate and eventually tabled and never got off the table. Evaluations went on for the rest of that school year. I don't recall if they actually came about the following year or not. I don't think so. I think at that point the university or the college at that time had developed the evaluation process itself. And it was accepted by the faculty and still exists. But the problem with the one that Cisco did was that the quotes from the students were often quite negative. But they were also quite positive as well. It was a mix. It was not intended to be a negative thing. It was intended to serve the student body. And that's the way I approached it. I told the faculty senate that. I felt they had the right to do the evaluations and they most certainly had the right to print them. And an awful lot of other faculty agreed. And as did the president of the college. I think the whole evaluation process says whether it was a Cisco or just the ones that are done even nowadays definitely helps very definitely. And it's part of the process that the university, this one at least, I think most use for promotion tenure and so on. If your evaluations are weak you don't get promoted or you shouldn't. But that was a huge thing. The same editor, he was so strong. I mean he was just gung-ho. He decided, his name was Mark Nelson. He decided that, and I'm not sure where he really got his information, but he decided to write an editorial criticizing one of the chief administrators on campus. And who was is unimportant. It wasn't the president. But so he had his editorial with, I don't know, eight or ten criticisms. And he showed it to me. And he didn't have to, but he did. And we talked about it for a little while and I said, well a lot of this is personal things. I can't see how a lot of these things involve the student body, even impact on the student body. But the funny thing about it was that our conversations for the most part took part in the dugout at the softball field. Because Mark was on the intramural softball team. And I knew this editorial was coming out next day or so in the paper. So I just went down there to the field and I said, Mark, we talked for a while. And so we'd talk and he'd gotten, play his position in the field and he'd come back to the dugout. We'd talk some more. Then he'd go back and play for a while. And we'd come back, talk some more. And eventually the editorial was, he watered it down. And he still ran an editorial criticism, but it was a fair editorial. And there was no big concern raised about that I'm aware of. The administrator certainly didn't say anything that ever got back to me. But Mark, later after he graduated, became an aide in the state senate, I believe it was. And then shortly thereafter he began working for a lobbying firm, a public opinion polling firm. And then not very long after that he ended up running that company in Salem. And he ran it until he retired two years ago. And I don't mind saying that he, like a quote, the governor, Ted Kuhlengowski, said that he would have hired Nelson to work on his campaigns and promote his image if he could afford him. And another, I think it was one of the governors or maybe a senator said that, in his opinion, Mark Nelson was the 31st senator and the 30 person senate. He had that much influence. He was a tremendously hard worker and had tremendous respect for him, even though he often lobbied for companies that he despised. But yeah, that's the breaks. But he was a very, very good student and a great editor. And other situations with the Siski newspaper, one time a student was running for student body president and word came to the newspaper that the fellow had a criminal record. And so we were kind of discussing whether that should be mentioned or not. And in the meantime, before it even got to be an issue with being in the paper or not, it became well known on campus. And the student did two things. One thing he came in and threatened the editor. And he also quit school and went back to Sacramento. But it was very touchy there because it was a feeling that he maybe would be violent with the editor. But it didn't quite get to that or luckily it didn't. And another situation, the paper several years later, did a little series on poverty in the valley or in southern Oregon interviewed a lot of people who were in dire straits. Sounds like something that should be done today, actually. But it ran a series of stories just about people and they had problems and what was being done about it perhaps to help them. And it got down to where one of the people interviewed, we got a letter from a lawyer saying this person was going to sue the newspaper for libel for being misquoted and making her look bad and so on. And luckily, all the interviews were tape recorded. And so we just wrote a letter back and said that they were on record, they were taped and the reporting was accurate. And so that was the end of it. Nothing was ever heard about it again. I'm not sure that tape recordings would be allowed in court, but anyhow. It was a little scary though, but I felt proud that the reporting was accurate. And once I sat down and listened to the tapes I said we're okay. Probably the most difficult time I can recall with the newspaper was under one college president we had, he was very supportive of the football program on campus. And newspaper thought that funding should be directed other directions than football. A significant amount of student money was being pushed toward football over the objections of a number of students. And some paper came out against it. And I had conversations with the president about it. He basically wanted me to control it and I said I can't, I won't. And that was basically it. And shortly thereafter, in the same school year, a writer for the paper wrote an editorial criticizing this president for getting rid of another administrator who was very popular with the students. And, but he had been let go by this president. And the president called the writer of the editorial into his office along with two other administrators. And I was not invited, was not there. And according to the three people who were present in addition to the president, I don't want to be too bad about this whole thing, but it didn't go well at all. And the student left in tears. And the two other administrators, according to what I was told by all three people, spoke up for the student and for her rights. And both administrators left the college shortly thereafter. One was fired and the other one retired. The president moved on to another position where he also ran into tremendous problems with the student newspaper. And other things happened. But it was kind of coincidental or whatever that the student paper at the other university also was on his case. And he didn't appreciate it. I probably wouldn't either. But I don't think I would have, wouldn't have treated a student like that. So, but, you know, that was some of the bad stuff that happened. There's awful lot of good things happen was primarily their training. So many of them, I'm so many of the students, you know, got excellent training, not only in writing and editing and photography and all that, but also interviewing and just will be learning how to become an adult. I mean, there's a lot to it. I mean, just going out trying to sell advertising was not easy for a student. So, it was tremendous experience for them. See what you find. You can see the small paper. There's, this is a whole year here. SOC budget overestimated. Oh, here's, this is the, the evaluation that got the faculty so upset. A hard look at a professor. But, so the other ones must have been back here somewhere. Yeah, here's the first evaluation. COM prof evaluated. So, journal, I mean, broadcasting was part of COM or theater at that time. BA from journalism, University of Missouri. Can't do much better than that. To find out if his name was really out or warm. Yes, his professor evaluation under fire. So Nelson was just basically writing a piece trying to see how they were handling it, what the philosophy was. This, man, this brings back so many memories. Bill Gabori, history professor, gives a talk on black America. And he ended up being on the FBI's black list mainly because he kept going to Cuba all the time. And he got his file and it was all black. Everything was redacted. It was really funny. Well, here it is. Professor evaluation process challenged by Faculty Senate. And Mark Nelson was called before the Senate to speak or was asked to speak. It wasn't called before. So the, the good first evaluation was Dave Allen's, which was a positive. And the second one was this other professors, which was negative. And that's why it became before the Faculty Senate. And Dean of faculties spoke. And he basically said this issue should not discredit its pages with needless opinion without empirical data. And so that was taken into consideration and was used. Nelson, the editor said the paper was trying to avoid a witch hunt atmosphere. The student body president spoke. He says, I do not believe the faculty is opposed to it being evaluated. But they'd like to see some ground rules being followed. And so that's why Mark Nelson pointed out what their, how it was done and why it was done and so forth. One of the professors said he commended the Cisco staff for finding a workable system so quickly. That was kind of nice. And here's what the editor wrote in response. It was so funny that Steve Bornette was associate editor on the Cisco at the same time his father was very outspoken faculty member. This is still, oh here's in November of that fall of 1971 the censure motion was dropped by the Faculty Senate. Steve Bornette wrote the article that says the Faculty Senate was at it again Monday. Debate on the Cisco's professor evaluation process stretched into a full hour. And in time the motion to censure the Cisco was dropped. And it goes on about that. They formed a committee to come up with a position paper to report back to the Senate. I don't know if that ever happened or not. So that's where it kind of ended as far as a public criticism. I think the first thing to realize is that we had a tremendous advantage. I had a tremendous advantage being where I was and where I am in Ashland. For one thing we are to this day the only county in the state that has two daily newspapers. Multnomah County does not. Lane County does not. But Medford and Ashland do. We had four TV stations. Each one at the time or three at the time were doing news. And then a fourth one came along later and doing news. So we had all these opportunities for students to intern both at newspapers and at the TV stations. Whether they're on the broadcast side or the journalism side. And it wasn't just in this county that was in Klamath Falls and it was also where where they could get internships. It was primarily here and a lot a lot of students got the chance to work for papers and stations. And we arranged it to not only did they get credit but they got pay. Not much. And I'm not even sure how proper that was but it was a good thing. It was just like a work study job. But as I mentioned, Martin Ellison went on to great things. Let me see. A student named Joe Hawke was our sports editor. He became the sports editor for the Las Vegas Review Journal. Jim Parker was an editor. He worked for some papers in Northern California for a while. And then Fort Collins, Colorado, where he got really interested in beer. He ended up doing the reviews of the pubs and stuff like that. And Fort Collins is the home of New Belgium Brewing. And Jim ends up moving to Oregon, becomes the director for the Oregon Brewers Association or something like that, Micro Brewers. But it was all connected to his interest in writing and in beer. But some other ones. Jessica Robinson was both Cisco editor and KSOR news director. And last time I checked she was working with Northwest News out of Spokane, Washington, who else? Jeff Brady is a correspondent with National Public, with NPR, with all things considered. Morgan Holm, again was with KSOR, is the vice president for content. I think they call it with Oregon Public Broadcasting, OPB. There's a whole bunch of other ones. One funny thing that happened, my wife and I were getting off an airplane in Washington, D.C. in the airport and we go into a lounge and I hear this voice. I say, I know that voice. I look up the TV and it's a former student named Rennie Knot. And he's the sportscaster for this TV station in Washington, D.C. He's also the voice of the Washington Redskins. And he moved from there to St. Louis. But he had been a student, he'd been on, he went on the internet, he was KOBI TV. But anyhow, there's all sorts of people like this. Terry Claflon, or Terry Martin, was a student on the newspaper. She was editor. And began working for the male tribune as an intern and then as a full-time reporter. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a series that she and a photographer at the paper did. She didn't get the prize but she won a lot of state and regional awards. She also got hired by us to teach journalism part-time. Kathy Noah was also editor of the Cisco. She's now editor of the male tribune. John Reed was editor of the Cisco. He's now formally editor of the male tribune. A whole lot of stories like that. At one point, very close, if not maybe more than half of the news editorial employees that the male tribune had been on the Cisco and Orbin in journalism at SOU, SOC, SOSC. Just because of the connection with the internships primarily. And that was really great. I think all the sports staff came from our place at one time. But anyhow, it's neat that that happened. There were some other folks. Mike Patrick, who was another editor of the Cisco, went into broadcasting. I don't think he was involved here on campus, but he became news director for the Christian Broadcasting Network in Virginia under Pat Robertson. Some of the other folks, we had this one fellow that worked on the Cisco. He ended up owning the second largest coffee company in the Northwest. Second only to Starbucks, as far as I know. So once he got out of Ashland, he did pretty well. Actually, he had a coffee shop here in Ashland that closed a couple of years ago. He's a character, something else. We had a woman who was on the Cisco staff and on KSOR. Remarkable career. She was just on the news staff at KSOR. And when Dave was still alive, Dave Allen, and Dave became ill with cancer. And Terry, Terry Danner, is her name, not only continued to help be on the station, but she ended up teaching his classes as a student, as an undergraduate. She finished out the year for him under, I mean she had some help obviously from some other faculty, but she stepped up and was teaching broadcast writing and broadcast announcing in Dave's absence when he was in the hospital. And she was a theater critic for the Cisco. And one time the Cisco writer editorial criticized in the way homecoming had been handled, managed by the student people involved. Well, Terry was also the person behind homecoming. So she's on the staff of the Cisco being criticized by the Cisco. There was all sorts of folks like that. The student who was criticized by the college president for the editorial about the firing of another administrator, graduated, went to graduate school for her master's and her PhD, and now as a folk professor at the University of Florida. I'm very, very proud of her. It was great. She, again, was one of those people I had, not only intelligence, but backbone and I was a tremendous student. But all sorts of folks. I'm looking at a little list here. That's probably enough of them. But the newspaper, as I said, it became computerized and then moved into the student union and I left the advising part of it. The yearbook was tough. It was tough to keep it going financially because the student interested college yearbooks was nowhere near what it is in high school as far as buying them or working on them. And eventually the student government and Sedental Fees committee decided to stop subsidizing the yearbook. Stop giving extra money to add to what the students would pay when they purchased one. And that was the death knell that put the book out of business, which is too bad, but it was happening all over the country. It's rare you even find a university yearbook nowadays. But for a while it lasted. It was a good experience for the students and usually non-controversial, not like the paper, which wasn't usually controversial, but had its times. My only big problem I had with the yearbook was personnel issue. We only had two or three photographers and only two of them were good. And the two that were good went to a dance at the Brit ballroom drunk and were taken out of the ballroom by security or somebody and how they rescorded out and reported to the dean of students for behavior, which it was. And so I immediately got wind of it and I'm thinking, well, we can't really have a yearbook without photographers. And yet they broke a number of rules. So I went to the dean of students and I said, look, we're a real pickle here. She says, yeah, you are, aren't you? And I said, I don't know what we can do. So we talked about it a long time and she said, okay, I'm not going to expel them. Not going to suspend them, but there's going to be a strong message delivered to them, which she did in a variety of ways. But she led them and probably me off the hook, which I thought was very, very kind of her. And they did not misbehave the rest of the year. Which is good of them. But that was a shaky thing. But that's pretty much it as far as the publications go. It took a lot of time. I mean, even though I wasn't involved, they're reading every story and everything. I was mainly just by their request. And maybe if I got wind of something, I would ask if I could. But most of my time was spent with the, like I said, just kind of chatting and then with the finances and then a lot of the personnel issues that came up with both publications. It wasn't unusual. I think it took more time than probably should have, but I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the interaction with the students. Personally, that was the best part of the whole job I had at the college, I think, was interacting with students in one form or another. It's academic advising, publications advising, career advising, personal stuff. That's what I liked. With the teaching, I taught one so-called large lecture class. I only had 35 students in it. But at that time, that was considered large. Nowadays, it wouldn't be. And then I had the skills classes, news writing, had a toil writing, and so forth, a copy editing. And also had a class called Press and Society, which is kind of the ethics class. So those classes were all smaller and much more interacting with the students than the so-called lecture class was. And when I would get reviews, faculty evaluations, they would say, if it was a large class, they would say boring. Some said interesting, but I don't think I was much of a lecturer. Whereas the small classes, they came out pretty good. I developed a class, well, I started a mass media law class, and then freedom of speech class. And Press and Society became mass media ethics. And those were my three favorite classes by far. I got away from the skills classes and concentrated more on these small seminar-type classes, where there's tremendous interchange between myself and the students and a lot of debate, discussion, dealing with law or ethics. And I really, really liked those classes. And I was able to build up the curriculum in that respect. We had at least, at one time, at least 60 journalism majors, if you would call them that. It was an emphasis within the communication major. So you could say, well, I want to be in small group communication, or I want to be in journalism, or I want to be something else broadcasting. And we had a large number of students in journalism. And so I was able to do my classes, advise publications, and hire adjunct faculty to teach a lot of the skills classes. And the adjunct faculty came from the profession. And so the woman I mentioned, Terri Martin, who had the male tribune, who had been syscue editor, came back and taught news writing, journalistic writing, a couple other classes for us. Usually one or possibly two classes a term while working at the paper, and then later after she left the paper. In fact, I think she may still be teaching at least one class here. We had Burt Fox, who was a photo editor at the male tribune, taught photography, photo journalism, for us, which we taught in conjunction with the art department in their photography program. And he became photo editor for the National Geographic, which is a pretty darn hurry position. And so he had some skills. So Terri and Burt were right off the bat, pretty sharp people. And Richard Sept entered into the tidings taught for us. Entered their time at the tidings. John Reed from the male tribune taught for us. Who else was there? Well, other photo editors from the tribune taught photo journalism for us. I think that was about it. There have been some other ones as well. But the point was that they were all professionals. And so they're learning from the professional. They don't have to listen to some has been like myself or somebody that just read about it in a book. And the other good thing about it was that the professionals coming on campus could see who the better students were. And that led more to the internships, which led to the jobs, which led to careers. And it also built a relationship between myself and the paper, which benefited both myself and the university. Whenever I had a sabbatical leave or many summers, I would work six months or three months at the male tribune. And whatever they wanted. So sometimes it was sports, sometimes it was business. I don't know why I ever did business. I didn't, it wasn't my field. And sometimes I was the city reporter or the county reporter, whoever they needed at that time. And it was all riding. And I didn't do any editing at that time. But I always had that connection. So I was always sharpening my own skills. But again, connecting with the people who worked at the paper. And some, at one point I was actually a reporter under my former student, John Reed, which is kind of weird. And that also I developed a relationship with the publisher, Steve Ryder. And he, well, his money and the male tribune's money. And I developed the First Amendment seminars on campus. But they never would have happened had not the male tribune funded them. And they basically, we would bring a noted media person on campus. That's good. Can you talk about why those seminars were important? Why those ideas weren't in service? I think that there had been a history on campus of having speakers of national note on campus. I'm trying to think who some were. Rod Sterling from Twilight Zone. Some other noted authors, and I'm drawing a blank on some of them, but they're very well known authors and philosophers have been on campus. And then that kind of died out. And there seemed to be a void or at least not anywhere near as much of that as there had been. And so Steve and I were talking about trying to build or bring folks on campus that people had heard of. But one of the main reasons for it was to get community on campus. The community come and listen to somebody that the college was putting on instead of this big old wall. We're here for students in the communities out there doing their thing. And I think that was probably Steve's emphasis. And certainly our administration was all for it. They're always looking at ways to get the community involved. And as you're probably well aware, when you do do something like that on a campus or even in the off campus, it's mostly community people that go. And it turned out that these were very, very popular with the community. Student body, so-so, they're somewhat interested, especially if they were in journalism or something like that. But the Stephenston Union Rogue River Room was packed for these events and it was probably 80 percent community. But our first speaker, once, you know, Steve got the funding together and we figured out who we wanted to ask. Our first speaker was Fred Friendly, president of CBS News. And that was a real coup. I'm very happy about that. When he came and he was, of course, his whole interest was the Constitution. Was he a writer in the mid-80s? I'm not positive about that. It's likely been around that time. He, Fred, had left CBS at that point. I know that. But he came on campus and his wife was his, she did everything for him other than speak. She set up the trip. She, you know, everything, as far as the logistics, she did. And a fantastic person. She's still living in Brooklyn, New York. And we exchange cards every year. She's a wonderful, wonderful person. But, yeah, he came on campus and he had this little pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. And he gave his talk and he went around, you know, asking people about this or that, this right or that right. You know, do you think that's, should that be a right or not? And he was right in everybody's face. And he was wonderful. And the audience just, gosh, he was a CBS News President talking to us. And we had several other, you know, folks after that. It didn't last very long, maybe seven years or something. Steve retired as publisher. The paper changed hands two or three times. You know, the funding was no longer there. And so the forum, the seminars died. The forum is a better word to put it. But that was a really nice thing when I was here. Dave Frohnmeyer, former Attorney General in Oregon, ran for governor, moderated our first two or three that we did. And that he had to, he had to not moderate when he was running for governor. I felt that was a conflict of interest. But he was another wonderful person, a big supporter of our program. But we did those types of things. This is all kind of tied in with the teaching. And the speakers would come to classes too and speak. That was part of the deal. It was in the contract. Of course. And I think that happens when anybody comes on campus. At least it should. The journalism program got quite big. We had the adjunct faculty. We had another fellow named Russell Sadler taught as an adjunct for us. He was a political columnist, syndicated across the state, speaker. He spoke all over the place. Very knowledgeable of Oregon history and Oregon politics. And very influential. He even was involved in a couple lawsuits, I think, regarding open records in state government. But Russell came down. When I took one of my sabbatical leaves, Russell came down at the request of the president of the college at that time. We knew of him. I didn't really know much about him. But we talked to Russell and President Cox said, this would be a good guy. So he came down and taught while I was on sabbatical. And then he stayed on as an adjunct faculty member for several years. He was very popular with the students. And so he was a very good addition. And it helped us fill the need for the students. And then after I left, we hired two people, D. L. Richardson, the young man out of Alabama, to teach and also Paul Steinle, who was much more experienced than D. L. in a variety of ways, in newspapers and in television. He'd been news director, I think it was KING or one of the Seattle stations, TV stations, had a long newspaper background as well. So the combination of both those professionals coming in was very good for the program. And they were much different, which was also good, I think, for the program. But as the years kind of went by, computers became a much bigger, bigger deal. And people began to think, well, you don't need journalism anymore. D. L. resigned. And so the program felt just to Paul, who then moved into administration as a social provost. And so the combination of two things was happening. We were losing faculty and we were losing program because of the attitude that you didn't need to have writers, primarily, at least not journalistic writers. So I think it's crazy whether it's on the internet, blogs and newspapers that are in print or on the internet, internet, whatever it is, there's always a need for good writers. But now things have become just so technical and creative in a different sense. So that's why the program has basically merged into another program on campus and there's nothing like it used to be. And I think it's a sad thing. But that's the way it was. It is. Myself, I, you know, after I continued or after I retired from, maybe before I retired from teaching, while I was teaching, I was involved a lot in the campus governance as a faculty member, which was another interest I've had and really enjoyed that part of it, in addition to the teaching of smaller classes and advising, whether it was a faculty senate or the faculty union, whatever it might be, it was a lot of fun. And sometimes not so much fun. But all in all, it was a very good experience. And then I, you know, I finally resigned or retired and did the part-time teaching for a while and went off to other things. That was it.