This second entry in an occasional series from Roy Peter Clark, who witnessed the Poynter Institute’s founding, explores its history in honor of its 50th anniversary.
Although Nelson Poynter had a great interest in education, it is fair to say that his final concerns, before his sudden death in 1978, were more about his newspaper than the school that would come to inherit it.
That newspaper was the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay Times. The nonprofit school he founded was first named the Modern Media Institute, housed in a tiny bank building on Central Avenue in St. Pete. The first leaders of MMI ignored the modest founder’s wishes when they renamed the place the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, now recognized across the globe as Poynter.
Either from a serious or humorous point of view, the name Poynter was felicitous. Whether it is a hunting dog with a nose for news, that finger next to your thumb, or that extended stick a teacher uses for emphasis, the word pointer carries a connotation of curiosity, emphasis and forward direction, sensibilities that point to the habits of good journalism,
News judgment can be said to be an act of pointing: “Look! Over there!” How else would we come to know the things in our world that are truly interesting or important or both?
Nelson Poynter’s vision and generosity — giving away most of his estate in the public interest — may have passed the tests of the IRS when it came to a school owning a newspaper. But that inheritance arrived with one serious disadvantage: He never left behind marching orders on what the school should do and be. He left that to us.
He did mention that the school should not duplicate the work of other institutions. He added that it might become a “junior API.” The American Press Institute in Reston, Virginia, gathered working journalists — mostly veterans — around a huge round table for weeklong professional improvement programs.
Poynter named Eugene Patterson, recognized as one of the titans of American journalism, as his successor. There were titans in those days, and they enjoyed each other’s company in organizations such as the American Society of Newspaper Editors. So when Patterson was trying to figure out what MMI would do, he turned to two friends whose status on the global stage was equal or superior to his: first, Roger Tatarian, and then Harold Evans.
Tartarian had been Patterson’s boss at United Press International, the news service in direct competition with The Associated Press. After a brilliant career as a war correspondent, bureau chief and top dog at UPI, Tartarian settled in as a college teacher in Fresno, California. He also served as a journalism coach and news consultant to organizations across the country.
Patterson invited his old friend to spend time in St. Pete interviewing key stakeholders. Tartarian would deliver a plan that Patterson found disappointing. I remember that the entire board found the plan too modest, lacking the vision for a school that, over time, would benefit from considerable financial resources from the newspaper that it owned.
It just so happened, in 1981, that Britain’s most honored journalist, Harold Evans, was fired from his job as editor of the Times of London by none other than Rupert Murdoch. Evans, who would one day be knighted, was an almost legendary figure in journalism circles. He took on a crusade, leading to the world court, to allow him to publish information revealing that a drug given to pregnant women, thalidomide, caused serious birth defects.
Evans, who would marry magazine editor Tina Brown, assume many important editorial positions and write important books about the craft and values of journalism, was invited by Patterson to spend time in St. Pete. It would be an opportunity to take a kind of sabbatical from the grind of daily journalism and write a book about his experiences at the Times of London, including his squabbles with Murdoch.
Oh, by the way, Harry, while you are in St. Pete, why not talk to the good folks who are trying to make sense of this new media institute?
Eventually, Evans would lead a small conference on journalism values sponsored by the institute. Along the way, he offered a report that did have a vision, that the institute would be a place where the best journalists could take time off from daily work to study a problem, or perhaps write a book. Patterson would sigh with disappointment. The Evans vision looked too much like the programs at Harvard sponsored by the Nieman Foundation.
This led to a famous meeting of the MMI board that Patterson would talk about for years. Tartarian, no. Evans no. What should we do now?
I sat in a corner and raised my hand. I told the board that I had an idea that was inspired by my graduate school on Long Island: the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1970, Stony Brook was still a young, ugly, sandy and unfinished campus filled with buildings constructed of liver-colored brick. On important days, the landscapers would actually paint the ground green to create the illusion of grass!
As new buildings went up, the planners came up with an idea. Do not, for a while, lay paths from building to building. Over months and semesters, students would create those pathways with their feet. It was like a full-life game of connect the dots. Students shuffled and scuffled the paths that would be turned to concrete and macadam.
I used that as an analogy for how we might organize the institute. I stood up in front of a chalkboard at the head of the trapezoidal conference table. There is no record of what happened next, but here is my memory of what I said:
“While we have been wondering what we should be doing, we have actually been doing things. Our programs seem to fall into four categories.”
I drew a large circle on the board, surrounded by three other circles, like moons around a planet.
Inside the big circle, I wrote: WRITING. In the other three circles, I wrote: DESIGN, ETHICS, MANAGEMENT. Then I drew lines connecting all the circles with each other.
Patterson knew right away that I made writing central because … well, because it is what I do. So he invited a revision in which all the circles were equal, looking like a baseball diamond.
WRITING would stand for all programs in reporting, editing, interviewing and storytelling.
DESIGN would come to stand for all forms of visual journalism: photography, graphics, illustration, use of color.
ETHICS would stand for all forms of responsible practice, starting with the mission of journalism to the nuts and bolts of good decision-making.
MANAGEMENT would stand for everything from the business aspects of the enterprise to running a newsroom to creating a culture of leadership.
It is obvious that certain aspects of journalism did not land easily within this framework. Where was technology, understanding markets or media law? Where was broadcast journalism in all of its formats?
But the revised chart looked like something, a constellation perhaps, with plenty of room to imagine a larger media universe.
In the early years, we called these circles CENTERS. When they grew without necessary interconnections, they became denigrated as SILOS.
Sometimes the travel begins without a map. You make your way, the best you can, until you can look back and see how far you’ve come, with a clearer sense of where you are going.
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