Seline Lecture with Randy Essex

Nicole Blackstock Author

04/16/2021 Added

134 Plays

Description

This year’s Seline Lecture guest speaker was executive editor of The Omaha World-Herald Randy Essex. The virtual event had over 50 attendees. His talk "Journalism Love Stories" covered why a news career is both important and fun. Through the lens of his seminar on America, Essex discussed his time working in seven states across five decades. He explained why journalism will remain an important and fun career into the foreseeable future.

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[00:00:40.680]Okay. I will go ahead and get started.
[00:00:42.700]My name's Brooke.
[00:00:43.650]I want to welcome everyone to the 2021 Seline Lecture.
[00:00:48.130]First, we would like to thank the Seline Family
[00:00:50.280]for starting the series of speakers
[00:00:52.450]to honor their father who encouraged
[00:00:54.070]his children to study journalism.
[00:00:56.510]Our guest this year is the executive editor
[00:00:59.090]of the Omaha World-Herald, Randy Essex.
[00:01:02.040]He is a Nebraska native in College of Journalism
[00:01:04.520]and Mass Communications alum
[00:01:06.730]working in Abilene, Texas, in Boise, Idaho
[00:01:09.640]before spending 18 years in editing roles
[00:01:12.370]at The Des Moines Register
[00:01:13.900]eight years at The Detroit Free Press
[00:01:16.230]and two years at The Cincinnati Enquirer.
[00:01:20.110]He has overseen coverage of "The Iowa Caucuses",
[00:01:22.907]"The Bankruptcies of General Motors and Chrysler"
[00:01:25.890]and won the 2016 Burl Osborne Editorial Leadership Award
[00:01:30.580]from the American Society of News Editors
[00:01:33.170]for editorials on immigrant rights
[00:01:35.400]when he was the publisher editor
[00:01:37.280]of the Glenwood Springs Post Independent
[00:01:39.420]in Western Colorado.
[00:01:41.250]His talk, "Journalism Loves Stories"
[00:01:43.400]will be followed by a short Q and A session.
[00:01:45.960]Please join me in welcoming Randy Essex.
[00:01:52.240]Well, thanks, Brooke.
[00:01:53.073]And thanks to the Seline Family
[00:01:55.090]for their support of the college.
[00:01:57.190]It's an honor to be asked to speak
[00:01:58.890]at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
[00:02:01.300]I wouldn't have had the career I've had
[00:02:03.970]or the job that I have now without the school.
[00:02:06.560]So, thank you.
[00:02:09.000]I know the moment that I decided to become a journalist,
[00:02:12.740]the very moment.
[00:02:14.530]I was a junior in high school
[00:02:16.260]and was on the student newspaper staff.
[00:02:18.890]A friend told me that our track coach
[00:02:21.010]who was our gym teacher
[00:02:22.832]was upset about the new synthetic surface on the track.
[00:02:25.750]This was about 50 years ago
[00:02:27.320]and it was our first synthetic surface
[00:02:29.640]so it was a cool step forward.
[00:02:31.530]We were moving into the modern age.
[00:02:34.140]I asked the teacher, Mr. Jones, if it was true
[00:02:36.630]and he said to meet in at the track the next morning.
[00:02:39.860]So the surface was soft and he was afraid
[00:02:42.310]that a student would get injured running on it.
[00:02:44.597]And he said, "I can't get the administration to listen."
[00:02:48.350]I remember vividly the next morning
[00:02:50.330]him kneeling down and grabbing an edge of the track
[00:02:53.470]and it broke off in his hand and crumbled.
[00:02:56.220]He held it up and said, "Smell it."
[00:02:58.430]And it reeked gasoline.
[00:03:00.550]Well, I was 16. I didn't know a lot, but I was pretty sure
[00:03:04.440]that the track wasn't supposed to be like that
[00:03:08.000]maybe it was the contractors for synthetic track too.
[00:03:11.410]So I was excited that I had found a scandal
[00:03:14.170]and I went back to the journalism room
[00:03:16.810]and talked to my teacher
[00:03:17.810]who was in her first year as a teacher
[00:03:20.120]after graduating from UNL and working on The Daily Nebraskan
[00:03:23.640]and in addition to getting her education degree.
[00:03:26.410]And I was ready to write
[00:03:28.560]but I learned for the first this time then
[00:03:31.350]that editing isn't just smoothing out words,
[00:03:33.470]it's directing what has to be be done to fill out a story.
[00:03:37.860]So she told me I had to talk to the principal
[00:03:39.930]for a response.
[00:03:40.830]I had a good relationship with the principal
[00:03:42.630]so I wasn't worried about that.
[00:03:44.400]He said, "No, you have to talk to the superintendent,"
[00:03:46.890]who I'd never met.
[00:03:48.830]A couple of days later,
[00:03:49.690]I was in the superintendent's office
[00:03:51.330]and as I sat down across from him
[00:03:53.910]he reached in his desk drawer
[00:03:55.190]and pulled out a seventies era tape recorder
[00:03:57.500]which is about the size of a book
[00:04:00.480]and put it on the desk in front of us and said,
[00:04:02.307]"I wanna be sure that you don't misquote me."
[00:04:05.510]Now, I suspect that he thought
[00:04:07.550]that that would intimidate me and keep me in line
[00:04:09.710]but I thought, "This is really cool."
[00:04:13.120]I'm 16 and he's worried about what I might write."
[00:04:17.510]The track was resurfaced. No one was hurt.
[00:04:20.720]And I learned what journalism can do
[00:04:22.570]and won my first writing award.
[00:04:24.320]What could be better than that?
[00:04:27.440]So I told that story a few years ago over lunch.
[00:04:29.750]It was the sports editor of the Detroit Free Press
[00:04:31.990]who called it "My Journalism Love Story."
[00:04:34.780]And I decided that's right but it's only the first.
[00:04:38.520]High school journalism and then coming to UNL,
[00:04:41.830]set me on a path from being really a hit kid
[00:04:44.740]in Beatrice, Nebraska
[00:04:46.860]to meeting presidential candidates, SI Young Award winner
[00:04:50.500]Henry Ford's great-grandson
[00:04:52.430]and getting a really dirty look from Mitch McConnell.
[00:04:55.530]I've lived the American dream for real
[00:04:58.210]thanks to public schools, which are incubators of hope.
[00:05:01.970]To any first-generation college students listening,
[00:05:04.850]you have my heart, because I was there.
[00:05:08.170]I'll tell you that I grew up poor.
[00:05:10.080]I'm 63 and the executive editor of a top 50 US newspaper.
[00:05:14.650]And I'm still embarrassed a little bit
[00:05:16.290]to share that my family didn't have an indoor bathroom
[00:05:18.790]until I was 14.
[00:05:20.910]I recently learned that Johnny Rogers
[00:05:22.940]didn't have an indoor bathroom in his youth too
[00:05:24.940]so, you know, simpatico.
[00:05:29.240]My older brother went to prison when I was 12.
[00:05:33.935]He was in and out of jail.
[00:05:34.768]I interviewed the Gates County sheriff once
[00:05:36.310]when I was in high school
[00:05:38.120]and he couldn't stop talking about how he couldn't believe
[00:05:41.180]that I was Tom Essex's brother.
[00:05:43.310]Tom had kind of a jail punch card, you know
[00:05:45.450]10 visits and you get one free night.
[00:05:47.900]I'm kidding but more than one adult murmured behind my back,
[00:05:53.487]"He's an Essex. They're trash."
[00:05:56.280]That was really unfair to my parents
[00:05:57.930]who are good, hardworking people
[00:05:59.850]but when you're poor and live in a crummy rental
[00:06:01.790]with an outhouse visible from the street, things stick.
[00:06:05.200]So today, when I think about the concept of White privilege,
[00:06:08.120]I think about that and how I was escape
[00:06:10.464]the baggage of poverty.
[00:06:12.980]I went to college and my ex-con brother
[00:06:15.240]and embarrassing home were gone.
[00:06:17.070]People of Color don't shake off
[00:06:18.580]preconceptions so easily though.
[00:06:21.270]That said, in retrospect,
[00:06:23.070]attending a couple of my brother's trials,
[00:06:25.130]testifying as a character witness at one sentencing
[00:06:28.710]and visiting him in prison
[00:06:29.870]were really useful journalism lessons.
[00:06:31.900]I saw courts and jailers
[00:06:34.100]and the State Parole Board in real life
[00:06:36.630]and that was intriguing.
[00:06:38.750]The reinforcement I got from high school journalism
[00:06:41.550]and my many public school teachers was critical.
[00:06:45.200]And I will always advocate for public schools,
[00:06:48.270]the best social program and socialization program ever.
[00:06:52.900]I know, I believed I could go to college
[00:06:54.810]because of that support and succeed
[00:06:56.830]and that took some determination.
[00:06:58.300]But once I was there, what made college fun
[00:07:01.100]and deepened my love for journalism
[00:07:02.870]was what I consider the number one quality
[00:07:05.000]that's mandatory for journalists, curiosity.
[00:07:08.750]If you don't want to learn
[00:07:10.140]if you aren't fascinated by the world around you
[00:07:12.550]if you don't naturally ask, "What about this?
[00:07:14.690]What's behind that? What's her motivation?"
[00:07:17.720]you're probably not going to enjoy news work for very long.
[00:07:20.930]So cultivate and never suppress your curiosity.
[00:07:25.280]I'm going to show you my path
[00:07:28.210]which I call "A Seminar in America."
[00:07:31.200]And I'll talk about something that I learned and loved
[00:07:34.550]at each stop.
[00:07:37.260]So, oh, the places I've gone, right?
[00:07:44.410]So here is a postcard from Beatrice
[00:07:49.990]about the era that I grew up. I can tell from the cars.
[00:07:54.380]My mom worked at a department store on the street.
[00:07:59.090]And you know,
[00:08:02.780]again, I think the public schools there were just fabulous.
[00:08:06.690]So after Beatrice, I moved on
[00:08:10.770]after my freshman year at Hastings College
[00:08:13.360]to where many of you are, at UNL.
[00:08:17.260]Just had a wonderful experience and The Daily Nebraskan
[00:08:21.570]and the J-school really taught me terrific standards
[00:08:25.320]and gave me a lot of confidence.
[00:08:28.870]Then, my first job after a World-Herald internship in 1979
[00:08:35.017]was the Abilene, Texas Reporter-News
[00:08:38.890]Love story, I met both of my wives there.
[00:08:41.570]I'm a serial marrier of Texans.
[00:08:46.130]And I was a little bit surprised in Abilene
[00:08:51.560]and then I went to Boise, Idaho.
[00:08:53.520]And you can see the upgrade in the scenery.
[00:08:57.990]I was a little bit surprised in both places
[00:09:01.000]that the standards weren't quite as rigorous
[00:09:03.830]as what I had learned at the J-school.
[00:09:06.370]Some people were much more casual than I would expected.
[00:09:09.870]But it was daily journalism.
[00:09:11.610]In both places because I was a copy editor
[00:09:13.640]because newspapers had just computerized
[00:09:16.400]and they found that a lot of work
[00:09:18.500]was being transferred to the newsroom
[00:09:20.300]and they needed young people who were comfortable
[00:09:23.770]doing just a little bit of putting in some automated codes
[00:09:27.893]and so forth.
[00:09:28.990]So it was easier to get a job as a copy editor.
[00:09:31.560]And what I would do would be volunteer to write stories
[00:09:35.240]including editorials in Boise.
[00:09:37.940]I had written editorials for the Daily Nebraskan
[00:09:40.970]and I enjoyed that.
[00:09:42.020]So, through a combination of odd staffing situations
[00:09:47.260]including the editorial page editor
[00:09:49.040]getting in trouble with the publisher
[00:09:51.120]I became the acting editorial page editor in Boise
[00:09:53.890]when I was 25.
[00:09:55.790]The first person I ever voted for was Frank Church
[00:09:59.200]in the 1976 Nebraska Democratic primary,
[00:10:02.470]which he won but he obviously didn't get the nomination.
[00:10:06.340]When I moved to Idaho, Frank Church was out in the Senate.
[00:10:09.060]He'd been defeated in the Reagan-Wade of 1980
[00:10:12.847]and I got to meet him and his wife.
[00:10:15.600]And he had had cancer in his youth
[00:10:17.920]and had a recurrence and died
[00:10:20.020]and as the editorial page editorial
[00:10:22.280]I was then responsible for writing
[00:10:25.530]the tribute obituary editorial for Frank Church,
[00:10:28.920]which was really intimidating.
[00:10:31.270]There was a Saturday when I had these clips spread out
[00:10:33.610]in front of me and I didn't know what I was talking about.
[00:10:37.360]I muddled through it
[00:10:39.500]and one of the big lessons that I learned in Boise
[00:10:43.520]is that you have to start, you have to move ahead.
[00:10:47.400]Writer's block is a luxury that we just don't have.
[00:10:52.640]You learn negative lessons in places too.
[00:10:54.980]The Abilene managing editor gossiped about staffers.
[00:10:58.790]When he did that, I thought,
[00:10:59.877]"Well, what does he say about me?"
[00:11:03.300]And the takeaway there is if you become a manager
[00:11:07.200]you can never share details about staffers.
[00:11:11.570]Managers can seem distant at times.
[00:11:13.520]Even your favorite boses know other things
[00:11:15.620]that they can't share.
[00:11:17.120]So don't ever take a management role
[00:11:18.860]if you can't abide by that.
[00:11:20.240]It can be very damaging. Bad managers can be very damaging.
[00:11:25.620]These places also started to teach me about America.
[00:11:28.680]In Abilene, I was surprised that anybody still cared
[00:11:31.720]about the Civil War. People called me a Yankee.
[00:11:34.080]I pointed out to them that Nebraska wasn't in the union
[00:11:37.720]at the time of the Civil War.
[00:11:39.630]I started to learn about the oil business
[00:11:41.930]and the rough and tumble part of politics in Texas.
[00:11:45.930]In Boise, I just learned about the amazing beauty
[00:11:49.330]and isolation of the West.
[00:11:51.370]And when I was there,
[00:11:52.370]there was a surge of white supremacists.
[00:11:56.070]In Northern Idaho,
[00:11:56.903]there was a compound called Aryan Nations
[00:12:00.300]and there was an offshoot of that
[00:12:02.540]of people doing armored car robberies around the Northwest.
[00:12:07.520]One of the reporters who was covering that for us
[00:12:12.090]was in Northern Idaho trying to track down
[00:12:16.165]a wife of somebody who'd been charged
[00:12:18.160]and the FBI raided the house next door to him.
[00:12:21.350]It was a safe house where they counted money
[00:12:23.970]from the armored car robberies.
[00:12:26.560]So we teased him endlessly
[00:12:28.710]about being such a great, trained observer.
[00:12:31.890]So then I got to go to The Des Moines Register.
[00:12:34.570]I had a young son at that point
[00:12:36.930]and that was four hours from where I grew up.
[00:12:39.920]The register at the time had won 13 or 14 Pulitzer Prizes.
[00:12:46.100]It was such a step up from Abilene and Boise.
[00:12:52.880]I got to meet presidential candidates,
[00:12:55.230]learned about presidential politics at the register,
[00:13:01.470]worked with, I think when I was on staff
[00:13:04.360]there were four people who had won Pulitzers
[00:13:06.650]or who would go on to win Pulitzers at this point.
[00:13:09.867]I wanna share with you my bonafide.
[00:13:14.280]It's about having learned about presidential politics.
[00:13:17.010]This is actually just kind of fun.
[00:13:19.170]This is an electoral map that I did on September 17th.
[00:13:26.060]I had some undecided States, but at that point
[00:13:29.870]I said Pennsylvania would be the key to the election.
[00:13:34.600]And I actually got every state, right except Georgia
[00:13:38.480]and one district in Maine that voted for Trump.
[00:13:42.690]So, that's fun.
[00:13:45.811]And now I have to stop the screen share.
[00:13:47.590]There's the button for that.
[00:13:50.960]And go back to my little travel log.
[00:13:54.001](Randy chuckles)
[00:13:54.834]This is the fun of Zoom, right? Okay.
[00:14:00.360]So we're in De Moines.
[00:14:02.080]I worked for the register for 18 years
[00:14:05.070]progressed to do every city desk job,
[00:14:09.130]was an assistant managing editor.
[00:14:12.430]And just,
[00:14:13.450]I worked with such brilliant people there.
[00:14:16.320]I learned about logistics of covering a big story
[00:14:21.540]the precision involved in elevating a story and in editing.
[00:14:29.020]There was a reporter there named Jean Hunsberger.
[00:14:31.420]He'd been the sports editor
[00:14:33.130]and the city editor and was just revered.
[00:14:36.770]Jean was a little gruff.
[00:14:39.570]So at the time there was a rule
[00:14:41.980]that if you change the reporters lead
[00:14:44.070]you had to talk to the person.
[00:14:46.010]This was before cell phones, this was before email.
[00:14:49.390]And I tried numerous times through the evening
[00:14:52.190]to reach Jean, wasn't able to do so.
[00:14:55.510]So the next day, and when I got to work
[00:14:59.950]I kind of sheepishly approached Jean and said,
[00:15:02.677]"Hey, here's why I changed your lead. I tried to call you."
[00:15:05.930]He said, "I don't care. I don't read that stuff
[00:15:08.940]after I turn it into you guys, it just pisses me off."
[00:15:12.240]That's kind of a Zen lesson. Do your work, then let it go.
[00:15:18.179]So, what did I fall in love with in Des Moines?
[00:15:22.150]I fell in love with running.
[00:15:24.570]When I was 32 in 1990,
[00:15:27.110]freshly promoted to legislative editor
[00:15:29.030]and with a three-year-old at home,
[00:15:30.190]I quit drinking, quit smoking and took up running.
[00:15:33.510]I've since ran races in 33 states, plus Ontario.
[00:15:38.260]And the takeaway there is to take care of yourself.
[00:15:40.680]People become really focused on their professions
[00:15:44.110]and lose sight of that sometimes.
[00:15:46.900]So after 18 years in Des Moines,
[00:15:50.730]the editor in Des Moines
[00:15:52.000]became the editor of The Detroit Free Press
[00:15:54.680]and asked me to take a job there. And I was scared.
[00:16:00.660]I'm from Beatrice, the biggest city I had lived in
[00:16:03.760]to that point was Des Moine.
[00:16:05.390]And I asked a friend about it and he said,
[00:16:08.737]"Well, if an editor at The Detroit free Fress
[00:16:12.220]were offered a job at The Des Moines Register
[00:16:14.220]would they consider that a step up?"
[00:16:15.890]And I said, "Meh, no."
[00:16:18.060]So I went to Detroit and truly fell in love
[00:16:22.360]with the town and the people.
[00:16:24.340]The people are sweethearts.
[00:16:25.620]You'd think that it's gonna be this really rough place
[00:16:28.730]but if you're not hanging out with the criminals
[00:16:34.070]it's not the Eastern Union town.
[00:16:36.200]And it's very much a Midwestern town
[00:16:37.880]and people have been through a lot and pull together a lot.
[00:16:41.890]This city oozes history from auto making in Motown
[00:16:45.180]to the end point of the underground railroad.
[00:16:47.550]And this little picture across the river is Windsor Ontario
[00:16:51.750]which was a destination point for slaves escaping.
[00:16:56.850]And there's a monument to that on the Detroit River Front.
[00:17:02.370]So, what I say about Detroit
[00:17:05.190]is everything you think you know about Detroit is true
[00:17:07.700]but you don't know the half of it.
[00:17:10.240]There are people who are doing really inspiring things.
[00:17:15.240]We did a project called "Living with Murder"
[00:17:17.380]in which we mapped the homicides in Detroit for seven years.
[00:17:21.360]And as we plotted those, the dots really,
[00:17:25.610]it just became black, but with a few exceptions.
[00:17:29.120]So we concentrated on those areas
[00:17:31.720]where there had been fewer homicides
[00:17:36.190]and asked what was happening there.
[00:17:38.220]And one of the stories that we found
[00:17:39.700]was about the bicycle brothers
[00:17:41.650]who took over an abandoned building
[00:17:45.720]and they gathered up spare parts of bicycles
[00:17:49.180]and then they got the kids in the neighborhood
[00:17:50.930]and the homeless people in the area
[00:17:52.810]and built bikes for them.
[00:17:54.620]I was biking back from brunch one day
[00:17:57.857]and pulled up beside a guy
[00:18:00.790]who you could tell his bicycle came from different parts
[00:18:03.820]and I said, "Is that from the bicycle brothers?
[00:18:06.487]"Yeah, man. They're the greatest."
[00:18:09.430]I also got into business journalism in Detroit
[00:18:13.920]because the editor put me in charge of the auto industry
[00:18:18.810]and other business.
[00:18:20.380]And I had no anticipation of being a business journalist
[00:18:25.770]but it was a big story.
[00:18:28.680]Detroit is the center of global commerce.
[00:18:30.530]And just that experience both helped me
[00:18:35.550]become a more sophisticated journalist
[00:18:38.220]and helped me become entrepreneurial.
[00:18:40.870]I started a program called Michigan Green Leaders there
[00:18:45.750]back when tens of thousands of auto jobs were being lost
[00:18:49.140]and the idea was sort of to determine
[00:18:52.700]what best practice would be.
[00:18:54.570]We got Bill Ford, Jr., Henry Ford's great grandson
[00:18:57.070]to be our keynote speaker.
[00:18:59.530]We filled an auditorium for the first session
[00:19:03.080]which was on the fourth 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
[00:19:07.650]And then that program sustained itself for six years.
[00:19:10.950]We have to, as journalists, think about
[00:19:12.910]the value of what we do and how we can present it
[00:19:17.130]in fresh ways in the modern environment.
[00:19:21.180]In 2010, I got throat cancer and that
[00:19:26.990]and when that happens in the middle of a recession
[00:19:29.770]you think about,
[00:19:30.917]"Well, gosh, should I have a plan B in life?"
[00:19:34.470]So I went to work for an energy think tank in Colorado.
[00:19:38.610]Remember that I'd learned a lot
[00:19:40.310]about the oil industry in Texas,
[00:19:43.100]I was learning about green energy through green leaders,
[00:19:45.950]I was inspired by entrepreneurs.
[00:19:48.560]I worked for a few months for the think tank
[00:19:50.340]and just discovered the think tank life was not for me.
[00:19:55.270]Fortunately, the editor in Cincinnati needed somebody
[00:19:59.840]to do what I had been doing in Detroit.
[00:20:02.070]So I went there and applied what I had developed
[00:20:08.030]as a, really a model,
[00:20:10.657]a simple model of community journalism,
[00:20:13.360]identify the biggest issues,
[00:20:15.470]do the best multimedia journalism around them that we can
[00:20:19.410]and turn that into public service.
[00:20:22.130]It's like in the "Spotlight", Marty Baron
[00:20:26.015]and "Spotlight" is the best journalism movie ever
[00:20:28.540]in my opinion, Marty Baron talked about
[00:20:30.950]wanting to make the Boston Globe essential to the community.
[00:20:33.810]Well, you do that by identifying, by listening to the staff
[00:20:39.240]by listening to community stakeholders
[00:20:43.210]and finding out,
[00:20:44.080]I had a, my 100 level political science professor
[00:20:48.680]said democracy works when the shoe pinches.
[00:20:51.820]So we have an obligation to find out
[00:20:54.010]where the shoe is pinching
[00:20:55.710]and to try to do something about it.
[00:20:58.370]In Cincinnati, as it happened, that was heroin and opioids
[00:21:02.090]it was an epicenter of the crisis
[00:21:04.740]and this was in 2012 before it was really fully emerging
[00:21:10.100]in the nation's conscience.
[00:21:12.320]I when, I, when I take over a staff
[00:21:15.030]I meet with every staff member, I ask,
[00:21:18.480]one of the questions I ask
[00:21:20.180]is what are the biggest issues in the community?
[00:21:23.230]In part, it's a test of how well people are plugged in
[00:21:26.010]and what their interests are and then it informs me.
[00:21:29.230]And we had a Northern Kentucky office,
[00:21:32.090]the picture here is actually taken
[00:21:33.650]from Kentucky across the Ohio River.
[00:21:37.140]And three of the people there told me
[00:21:39.660]heroin's a big deal here.
[00:21:41.530]One of them, a general assignment reporter
[00:21:43.920]in Northern Kentucky, Terry DiMio
[00:21:46.450]was just passionate about it and told me
[00:21:49.070]all the people who are trying to do something about it.
[00:21:52.490]Her sister had died of a heroin overdose
[00:21:55.180]in Cleveland a few years before.
[00:21:57.180]So we had prepared the first of two big projects
[00:22:01.780]that we did on heroin while I was in Cincinnati
[00:22:04.120]which was only a couple of years.
[00:22:06.930]In the course of that, my troubled brother,
[00:22:09.290]who had a period in his life when things had gone well
[00:22:13.080]overdosed on opioids that the VA had sent him.
[00:22:17.870]So that drove home to me
[00:22:20.190]how the things that we write about are real.
[00:22:23.750]They affect families. These issues, people live with them
[00:22:28.390]and feel the pain and so forth.
[00:22:32.020]At the end of our two projects on heroin
[00:22:36.630]I got the publisher to give us money
[00:22:38.620]and we got drop boxes built
[00:22:42.280]to put in to suburban police departments
[00:22:44.330]where people could drop off their drugs.
[00:22:50.260]So that was the community service aspect of it.
[00:22:52.610]And a couple of years after I left,
[00:22:54.670]Terry DiMio was one of the, was a lead writer
[00:22:58.240]in the Enquirer's Pulitzer on "Seven Days of Heroin
[00:23:01.570]when they fanned out "Across Ohio: Untold Stories".
[00:23:06.740]Mitch McConnell, Senator from Kentucky
[00:23:09.440]we did an editorial board with him.
[00:23:12.330]At the end of it, we had been talking about climate change
[00:23:16.180]and he he was saying, "I'm not a scientist."
[00:23:19.360]And I said, "Kind of off the cuff.
[00:23:22.270]Well, I don't think the thermometer is partisan."
[00:23:24.050]And that's when I got that wonderful dirty look from him.
[00:23:28.540]From Cincinnati, I went to Western Colorado.
[00:23:31.930]I think a lot of newspaper people
[00:23:33.280]have something of a fantasy
[00:23:34.630]that it would be great to run a little paper.
[00:23:37.640]The great thing about it
[00:23:38.770]is that you're close to the community.
[00:23:40.440]You can be a true community leader.
[00:23:43.140]I held forums there to discuss
[00:23:46.410]issues like immigration and housing, which were the issues
[00:23:50.930]that were really close on people's mind.
[00:23:57.974]I found my editorial voice there.
[00:23:59.760]I hadn't written an editorial since I was in Boise
[00:24:04.160]and won the Burl Osborne Editorial Leadership Award
[00:24:09.500]from the American Society of News Editors,
[00:24:11.420]which is today, News Leaders.
[00:24:14.884]And those were on integration
[00:24:17.730]after some some hate crimes toward immigrants
[00:24:22.170]where in Western Colorado,
[00:24:24.610]half the kids in school are immigrants,
[00:24:26.110]a third of the workforce is immigrants.
[00:24:29.180]I really loved meeting those people
[00:24:31.480]and being close to the community.
[00:24:33.160]Also, new Congresswoman Lauren Bovert
[00:24:37.420]got national publicity for the first time
[00:24:39.530]because of the story that the Post Independent did
[00:24:42.440]about her cafe in Rifle, Shooters Grill
[00:24:46.800]where the servers can very sidearms.
[00:24:50.840]So I feel, maybe moderately guilty
[00:24:53.950]about helping put Lauren on the map
[00:24:57.290]because she got a lot of national media after that.
[00:25:00.750]Then I went back to Detroit for a couple of years.
[00:25:04.650]I had intended to retire in Glenwood
[00:25:06.290]but winning the Editorial Writing Award,
[00:25:10.080]I felt like I should be at a place with a bigger voice.
[00:25:12.750]Got to explore more great issues there and,
[00:25:20.010]I'm trying to hurry a little bit
[00:25:21.040]'cause I think I'm running over.
[00:25:23.146]So I got back to Omaha.
[00:25:27.140]In part, The Detroit Free Press in Omaha
[00:25:29.487]ran a program called Table Stakes in 2018 that,
[00:25:35.080]it's a collaboration
[00:25:36.430]of the Lenfest Institute in Philadelphia,
[00:25:38.360]Poynter and the Knight Foundation
[00:25:40.430]to speed the digital transformation of newspapers.
[00:25:43.980]I got to know about the World-Herald operation a little bit.
[00:25:46.990]I had always read the World-Herald
[00:25:48.610]and was a digital subscriber for Husker Sports.
[00:25:51.550]So when the editor job opened up in late 2019,
[00:25:57.370]I applied and I am back here in Omaha.
[00:26:02.240]I was already in love with Nebraska
[00:26:05.771]and what I'm learning is how the state has changed
[00:26:11.300]and why, again, those important issues are.
[00:26:14.140]So as much as I felt the weight of the recession
[00:26:16.077]and the auto bankruptcies in Detroit
[00:26:17.960]and how they affected all of us there,
[00:26:19.970]as much as I felt morally obligated
[00:26:21.970]to stand up for immigrants in Colorado
[00:26:24.350]I'd never really felt the weight of responsibility
[00:26:27.280]that I did during the Black Lives Matters rally last summer,
[00:26:30.700]when a Black protester was shot to death
[00:26:33.150]in The Old Market by a White bar owner.
[00:26:36.560]The principles it served me are the things I learned
[00:26:39.250]at the Daily Nebraskan and in J-school.
[00:26:41.729]We posted an editorial the day after the shooting
[00:26:46.850]just calling on people to act
[00:26:48.710]in ways that would be respectful toward their neighbors
[00:26:51.560]and helpful to the community as it went under a city curfew.
[00:26:55.550]That's probably not the most profound thing
[00:26:57.350]but I think it was important
[00:26:58.690]for us to get out there and call for calm.
[00:27:01.940]We ran that editorial on the front page.
[00:27:04.410]Then in the summer, there was a lot of pressure on us
[00:27:08.380]to adopt one side or the other
[00:27:11.280]of the narratives about the shooting,
[00:27:14.260]either the dead protest brought it on himself
[00:27:17.060]or the bar owner was a white supremacist.
[00:27:18.837]And a lot of people saw no middle ground.
[00:27:22.070]I had never been called a racist before
[00:27:24.520]which happened this summer.
[00:27:25.700]But we worked all summer, stuck to the facts
[00:27:29.170]to unearth the new information
[00:27:31.130]and it culminated in a multimedia account
[00:27:33.720]of what the grand jury would consider when it convened.
[00:27:38.000]I am really proud of the fact that
[00:27:41.930]we stayed in the middle of that
[00:27:44.160]and provided important neutral information to the community.
[00:27:49.980]So, newspapers still have that leadership role.
[00:27:52.870]We know that daily newspapers are in decline
[00:27:55.300]but journalism is far from that.
[00:27:57.870]There's tremendous demand for our work.
[00:28:00.930]Today, after 42 years in daily news
[00:28:03.600]I believe my best work is in front of me.
[00:28:05.850]I have always believed that.
[00:28:07.720]I still imagine changing things for the better
[00:28:10.390]which is the magic of journalism.
[00:28:12.550]There's always going to be a bigger,
[00:28:14.090]more regulatory, more amazing story.
[00:28:17.530]So now you get the accumulated wisdom of my experience.
[00:28:21.450]One, disappointments can lead
[00:28:23.210]to things that turn out even better.
[00:28:24.880]I applied to be managing editor at The Des Moines Register
[00:28:27.380]in 2005.
[00:28:28.910]I went to Detroit instead, I loved it.
[00:28:31.190]I wouldn't be as worldly or entrepreneurial
[00:28:33.590]or business literate if I hadn't done that.
[00:28:36.480]But I went to Colorado, which wouldn't have happened
[00:28:38.740]if I had gotten that managing editor job
[00:28:41.850]I found my editorial voice, got to know immigrants
[00:28:45.010]and the opportunity to be a true community leader.
[00:28:48.240]Detroit and Colorado, Western Colorado,
[00:28:50.400]which are very different places
[00:28:52.390]contributed to the same important lesson to me.
[00:28:56.040]We all have prejudgments and an unconscious bias.
[00:28:59.700]And in identifying the most important issues facing Nebraska
[00:29:03.210]this is one, our homogenity is holding us back.
[00:29:07.340]We need to attract people to fuel the economy.
[00:29:10.180]This needs to be a welcoming place
[00:29:11.940]for people to move and to stay.
[00:29:15.690]That's not controversial.
[00:29:17.400]You know, business people are onboard with that
[00:29:21.590]and it's part of my mission as an editor.
[00:29:26.760]Well, America is becoming more diverse.
[00:29:29.490]Nebraska is becoming more diverse.
[00:29:31.070]We will either embrace that diversity
[00:29:33.030]or be more deeply divided by it.
[00:29:35.280]Right now, it's going that way.
[00:29:37.800]Racism and hatred are driven by fear.
[00:29:40.130]Fear is running natives ignorance.
[00:29:41.800]Its antidote is familiarity,
[00:29:43.830]getting to know people who seem different from us
[00:29:46.180]and learning how much like us they are.
[00:29:49.040]That will make you a better journalist,
[00:29:50.800]that will make you a better person.
[00:29:52.700]Lift your eyes, dream big.
[00:29:55.070]With the education and experience you're getting
[00:29:57.340]at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications,
[00:30:00.060]you can work anywhere in any format.
[00:30:03.010]Remember what got you there when you do get there
[00:30:05.560]what Nebraskans did to provide you with an education.
[00:30:08.440]When you could afford it
[00:30:09.380]you should give back to your Alma mater.
[00:30:11.510]It feels really, really good.
[00:30:13.980]The future of journalism is rich.
[00:30:16.460]As I said, the demand is great
[00:30:18.760]and our potential audience is huge.
[00:30:21.880]We will do paid newsletters, podcasting, data journalism
[00:30:25.190]and create entrepreneurial models to meet the demand.
[00:30:28.700]What you need to be a journalist today
[00:30:31.980]is no different from what I needed when I was a student.
[00:30:34.870]You need curiosity, you need to understand civics,
[00:30:37.860]you need to love the language, written or spoken,
[00:30:40.980]you need thick skin, especially with social media
[00:30:44.360]and empathy and confidence in your professionalism.
[00:30:48.270]You need to believe you can make a difference
[00:30:50.380]because you can.
[00:30:51.770]You can expose corruption, warn of dangers, help the Navy
[00:30:55.460]even get high schools racks resurfaced.
[00:30:58.100]We seek the truth and stand up for the truth.
[00:31:01.620]We're not the enemy of the people,
[00:31:04.110]we're the eyes and ears for the people.
[00:31:06.940]It's essential. And I love that.
[00:31:12.780]Thanks for the opportunity to speak.
[00:31:15.009]Thank you so much, Randy.
[00:31:16.060]I think we have about 10 minutes left
[00:31:18.500]so if people wanna put questions in the chat
[00:31:21.140]are just gonna go ahead and unmute themselves
[00:31:23.780]then we have about 10 minutes to do so.
[00:31:30.380]All right.
[00:31:31.703]I have a very quick question if I might jump in here.
[00:31:33.830]I'm John Schrader. I teach in the Sports and Broadcasting.
[00:31:37.630]I have a particular interest
[00:31:39.490]in Hispanic and Latin X communities.
[00:31:42.810]How do you characterize the press coverage,
[00:31:45.610]the news coverage of these communities in Nebraska?
[00:31:50.160]Not good.
[00:31:51.770]I think the pandemic actually raised our awareness
[00:31:58.230]of what Latin X folks are doing, how they're living.
[00:32:05.290]We were able to tell some human stories
[00:32:07.200]in the course of telling what was going on
[00:32:09.920]in the packing plants.
[00:32:11.840]From the World-Herald standpoint
[00:32:15.340]I added 12 community columnists last year
[00:32:19.580]including six people of color.
[00:32:22.750]Two of them have Latino backgrounds, but,
[00:32:30.070]and I assigned a reporter to minority affairs
[00:32:33.600]which is very seventies or eighties
[00:32:36.950]but it was just something that we needed to do
[00:32:39.000]so that we were consistently getting
[00:32:41.720]some of the issues into the paper.
[00:32:44.740]I don't like to talk about our paper,
[00:32:46.950]you know, our paper and our website, so...
[00:32:53.160]That, yeah, we can improve there.
[00:32:56.690]There is a question from Maria Marren.
[00:33:01.147]"When you were in Des Moines
[00:33:02.580]when Geneva overhaul also broke the name of a rape victim
[00:33:05.680]with the victim's consent, are first in these?"
[00:33:07.910]Yes. I was there.
[00:33:09.470]I was pretty new to the register at the time.
[00:33:13.210]I had absolutely zero to do with that story
[00:33:16.020]but it was exciting to be in the newsroom
[00:33:18.790]when we won the Pulitzer.
[00:33:21.270]I got to hold the gold medal for public service
[00:33:23.740]which looked
[00:33:24.997]a little like one of the gold-covered chocolates
[00:33:26.724]that you get.
[00:33:30.970]So you had mentioned that you were working
[00:33:32.980]at The Detroit Free Press during the recession in '08.
[00:33:36.820]Is that correct?
[00:33:38.340]Yeah. I was in Detroit from '06 to 2011
[00:33:42.070]and then in 2018 and '19.
[00:33:47.280]I'm curious, in terms of economic trends
[00:33:50.890]that adversely impact employment, do you,
[00:33:55.530]what's your perspective on the use
[00:33:57.540]of varying metrics that come out of the Department of Labor?
[00:34:02.130]Do you quantify that to a readership?
[00:34:06.200]Well, I think it's one picture.
[00:34:08.830]I mean, I think it's the official snapshot that we use
[00:34:13.070]but it really doesn't tell the full story.
[00:34:17.610]And, you know, one danger of data journalism
[00:34:21.850]is that data tends to fly it in real life experience
[00:34:26.560]so that we don't capture the pathos of it.
[00:34:30.398]And one thing that we did during the recession
[00:34:32.700]was told stories about the erosion of the middle class.
[00:34:36.720]And I recall in particular, a woman in her fifties
[00:34:40.250]who had a bachelor's degree,
[00:34:42.030]who had worked very successfully in finance,
[00:34:45.900]who lost her job
[00:34:47.220]and was living with her dog in her car, in a park.
[00:34:50.880]And that's just, she had done everything right.
[00:34:54.410]She was divorced, a lot of people are divorced
[00:34:59.204]and she just lost everything.
[00:35:14.128]Randy, sorry, Brooke, may I come in here?
[00:35:17.590]Yeah, definitely. Go ahead.
[00:35:19.880]Randy, I was going to ask
[00:35:21.500]what do you think newspapers can do
[00:35:23.270]to really overcome the conflict model of journalism?
[00:35:27.210]Because for example, if we look at Detroit,
[00:35:29.240]Detroit is a city that was famous for its food deserts
[00:35:32.680]in the Black community.
[00:35:34.580]You know, there were places
[00:35:35.610]where people couldn't even access fresh vegetables
[00:35:38.190]and fruits, and yet some local investors
[00:35:41.280]were building up the Brooks Cadillac Hotel
[00:35:43.440]to its former glory.
[00:35:45.240]So in lots of ways,
[00:35:46.190]many of the stories that come out of Detroit
[00:35:48.310]are stories about
[00:35:49.150]the Black community versus the White community,
[00:35:51.410]about the wealthy auto set
[00:35:52.930]versus the people who can hardly afford a bicycle.
[00:35:56.190]What is it that the news industry can really do
[00:35:58.420]to overcome some of those gaps?
[00:36:02.600]Well, right now the Free Press,
[00:36:06.280]it's deeply ironic that in a majority Black city,
[00:36:13.000]the Detroit Free Press is recognized
[00:36:16.676]it lost the Black community as readers
[00:36:19.730]because it didn't cover the Black community.
[00:36:22.160]So, senior editor who is a Detroit native
[00:36:26.340]is assembling a team to tell
[00:36:28.710]much more neighborhood level stories
[00:36:32.444]and particularly about that striving
[00:36:35.749]and entrepreneurial success that can happen
[00:36:38.900]on a micro level there.
[00:36:40.890]So the Free Press recognized, that like a lot of newspapers.
[00:36:45.060]You know, in the seventies and eighties it said,
[00:36:47.127]"Well, our money is in the suburbs
[00:36:49.190]and we have to get these suburban readers to pay attention."
[00:36:51.790]And that wasn't the expense of inner city readers
[00:36:55.250]who needed to be served.
[00:36:59.440]So, that's a piece of it is just to be in the community
[00:37:04.260]develop sources and get to know people.
[00:37:06.800]The solutions journalism model
[00:37:08.850]is something that journalists should learn
[00:37:12.300]and pay attention to and look for opportunities.
[00:37:15.350]I will tell you, and there's a struggle with that
[00:37:17.860]because people will always say, "Oh, we want good news.
[00:37:21.310]I want a good news story."
[00:37:22.360]My digital metrics tell me that's not true.
[00:37:25.310]People really don't read those stories, but we are
[00:37:31.330]we can be creative and find ways into them.
[00:37:33.880]We've been pretty successful
[00:37:36.290]with the guy who is looking for urban issues.
[00:37:41.280]And the summer really heightened our awareness in Omaha.
[00:37:45.790]So it's, you know, it's an ongoing effort.
[00:37:52.170]So we have a question. The World-Herald had several folks
[00:37:56.220]covering business a few years ago, trained our staff.
[00:38:00.590]We do have a business section on Sunday and we have a,
[00:38:08.190]we're actually just adding a reporter
[00:38:10.770]to cover employment trends, the entertainment industry,
[00:38:16.240]the restaurant industry
[00:38:17.800]because those things are gonna be remade after the pandemic.
[00:38:21.960]So, you know, the World-Herald,
[00:38:24.960]because of its employee ownership and buffet ownership
[00:38:27.630]was, in many ways insulated
[00:38:30.050]from the cuts that happened in the newspaper industry
[00:38:33.900]for a dozen years or so.
[00:38:36.100]So within three years, the World-Herald
[00:38:38.360]has experienced the reductions that happened
[00:38:43.250]over a longer period of time in the industry.
[00:38:46.650]And some things happened out of balance.
[00:38:49.900]We, the business staff probably was cut more than necessary.
[00:38:55.070]So we're adding to that to identify
[00:38:59.350]as we identify the stories
[00:39:01.050]that people are really interested in.
[00:39:03.870]I have a question, "Has your experience as a cancer patient
[00:39:07.140]now survivor, inform your perspective
[00:39:10.010]on the human side of healthcare?"
[00:39:12.370]Big question.
[00:39:13.710]I mean, certainly, I was really fortunate.
[00:39:16.970]I had great insurance and I just, I can't imagine
[00:39:20.340]what it would be like to go through that experience
[00:39:22.480]if you're worrying about how you're gonna pay for it
[00:39:25.174]and you're getting bills with,
[00:39:28.140]you know, five and six digits.
[00:39:32.842]And the World-Herald has published impactful pieces
[00:39:37.030]about sexual assault in Nebraska schools.
[00:39:40.060]Could you talk about your team's reporting process
[00:39:42.674]with handling such a sensitive issue?
[00:39:47.300]One thing that happened there
[00:39:50.180]right about the time that I got here,
[00:39:52.180]we had reported on a particularly heinous case
[00:39:59.040]where a student was groomed and assaulted
[00:40:02.160]in her home by a teacher.
[00:40:04.690]The principal had, I believe, kind of looked the other way
[00:40:08.610]while that was going on.
[00:40:09.590]And then we did some searching where we found at least 50
[00:40:15.700]50 to 70 teachers, you know, just after I got here
[00:40:19.270]50 to 70 teachers who had been
[00:40:26.660]fired or disciplined for sexual misconduct.
[00:40:32.256]One of the reporters in the first case
[00:40:35.660]won the trust of the family. And we try to do that.
[00:40:40.330]We try to give the victims an opportunity
[00:40:45.880]to tell these stories in their voice
[00:40:49.100]and how they've been affected.
[00:40:50.670]I think we had a recent case
[00:40:52.290]where there was a school security officer
[00:40:56.790]and girls' basketball coach
[00:40:58.600]who was charged with sexual assault.
[00:41:03.170]And it came out that he had worked at three schools.
[00:41:05.540]He kind of kept getting jobs
[00:41:07.560]where he had access to teen girls.
[00:41:10.960]And the reporter was able to get the first victim
[00:41:15.250]who is now an adult to tell her story.
[00:41:18.962]And I found that story to be really important and powerful
[00:41:23.760]because as she described it,
[00:41:26.050]both for adults and for young people,
[00:41:28.950]you could see the behaviors that would be warning signs.
[00:41:36.340]It's just a cautionary tale
[00:41:38.031]than an addition to showing the human impact of it.
[00:41:48.470]Okay. That probably concludes our time for questions.
[00:41:51.060]So everyone just take another minute
[00:41:52.990]to thank Randy for his time.
[00:41:56.377]And thank you. I enjoyed the opportunity to talk.
[00:42:08.580]All right. Best wishes to you all.
[00:42:11.940]Bye.

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Seline Lecture with Randy Essex

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