Many journalism students and visitors to the Walter Cronkite School alike have browsed the Cronkite Gallery in the First Amendment Forum, but few have met the curator who collects and catalogues the artifacts.
The collections of newspapers, cameras, photographs, awards, televisions and books in the gallery are a peek into the history of journalism, all compiled by curator John E. Craft.
“We’re very lucky to have somebody of John’s abilities and passions here at the school,” Christopher Callahan, vice provost of the Downtown campus and dean of the Cronkite School, said.
This semester will mark Craft’s 40th year as a professor at the ASU School of Mass Communications (Craft has been at ASU since before the journalism school was named after Walter Cronkite in 1984).
Prior to becoming a professor, he worked for public television, first as a cameraman and later as a stage director, creating educational programs for public stations in Iowa and West Virginia.
“PBS hadn’t been invented yet,” Craft said.
He was the director of educational television for Hancock County Schools in West Virginia from 1966-1970. He worked on the first instructional television system in the country, which broadcasted educational programs to thousands of students.
Some of Craft’s most successful projects later in his career were two documentaries about Route 66, “Arizona Crossroads: Along Old Route 66” in 1966, where he recorded stories along the “mother road” of America, and “66 Memories: Arizona Crossroads” in 1995.
“I still go around the state and talk about Route 66 based on the research I did for those videos,” he said.
Craft came to ASU in 1973 after more than 25 years in the field of broadcast. He became a broadcast mass communication professor and was part of the school’s shift downtown in 2008.
Craft was on the committee that hired Marianne Barrett as an assistant professor in 1994. Barrett is now the senior associate dean of the Cronkite School.
“He’s got legions of students who are where they are because of his teaching,” Barrett said.
In addition to working as a professor, Craft was picked to manage the Cronkite Gallery, which was built to memorialize Walter Cronkite and other prominent journalists. They have continued to add objects from the past to the gallery, including a television tube and, most recently, a printing press.
“Almost every time I go in there, I notice something different,” Barrett said.
Many of the objects in the gallery came from Craft’s personal collection, which he has built over decades. He considers it important to display old technologies because “no one would know about them unless they had the ability to see it.”
Even his office is filled with old pieces from the industry, including VHS tapes, an early laptop computer and a metal prop sword from a King Arthur documentary.
“I’m not sure where that fits into the gallery,” he said.
The rest of the objects were acquired from garage sales, personal donations from the staff and a partnership with the Scottsdale House of Broadcasting.
Craft is a member of the Silver Circle Society of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences — an honor given to people with more than 25 years experience in broadcasting.
He has lived through decades of technological and business evolution in the television and journalism industries, and change will continue as journalism remains.
“I’ve met a lot of people who thought their names were big,” he said. “We always need the functions of journalism.”
Contact the reporter at jestable@asu.edu
