As we all know, the journalism business isn’t exactly booming right now, but it was much worse last year. However, after I got to see Jim Lehrer speak at the 2008 Cronkite Luncheon and tell the who’s who of Arizona media to forget about the other stuff and focus on what we as journalists do, I don’t worry about the future.
This year, though, I am about as likely to hear Brian Williams speak as Michael Jackson is to release another hit single.
The way students are invited to the luncheon is by attending Cronkite events and blogging about them afterward. These events mostly include guest speakers on Monday nights and journalism-themed movies on Wednesday nights. The students with the most posts are the ones most likely to be invited.
This is excellent if you have those two nights open, your classes do not require homework that would somehow supercede those events, your internship hours are not during that time or you do not work for a publication with deadlines during those hours. However, if you are a journalistically active student, you’re probably out of luck.
It seems older Cronkite students are punished for going out and contributing to their field, either by working for professional or school publications or by doing the homework for their higher-level classes. Now don’t get me wrong, the Cronkite events are a great way to introduce freshmen into the world of journalism, but please forgive me when I pass up the chance to re-watch and re-blog about “All the President’s Men.” I’m sure it’ll be as good as it was last year, but I need to meet my Thursday deadline.
The Cronkite Luncheon is an amazing event, but if the only way to get an invite as a student is by blogging, then the student-section of the room will be missing some of the best journalists our great school has to offer. And it doesn’t have to be that way.
The Cronkite Luncheon is on Nov. 18, and the criteria for student tickets could easily be modified to include journalistic work done outside of the guidelines that have been laid down. Often times, the students who don’t attend the Cronkite events are students who are finishing stories or clips that are somewhat harder to make then a 150-word blog.
Hopefully, the system can be altered, just a tiny bit, so many of my peers who are having trouble finding time to attend Cronkite events and I will be able to rejoin Arizona’s finest and be inspired once again.
That or we could all scrap together $1,500 and get a table for ten.
I’m not sure if I’m being serious about that last point or not.
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
