The January 2012 edition of The North Carolina Press newsletter included an edited and condensed version of the following Q&A:

What should members of NCPA know about you and your background?  What was it about UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication that made you decide this was the place for you?

Journalism is in my blood.  My great grandfather began a small civil service weekly in New York City in 1897, and my cousins still run it. I commuted to downtown Manhattan via ferry across the Hudson River for two summers in high school, learning about the world of New York firefighters and police officers. It convinced me that my dream of becoming a reporter was possible.

I launched a newspaper at my elementary school with my friend. We were earning our Girl Scout badges in journalism. Having a byline, learning the power of the written word, and experiencing the limitations of a “free press” in a school run by nuns, made a lasting impression on me. I worked at newspapers in high school, college and at the University of London, where I studied during my junior year. I attempted to take every step I could to become a working journalist.

Like most young women at the time, when I graduated from college, the only question I was asked was: “How fast can you type!” I could type real fast, and that skill launched my career at both NBC News and CBS News, where I was able to learn from great broadcast legends Fred Freed and Walter Cronkite. 

It was CBS that enabled me to earn a master’s degree in communication. I was accepted to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison after getting a bachelor’s degree in English from Marymount College. Nine credits and a summer in Wisconsin got me started, but the lack of funds for an out-of-state student sent me back home to make a living. When Walter Cronkite hired me, I asked if I could leave work early one day a week so that I could earn a master’s degree. I commuted from Manhattan to suburban Connecticut and enrolled in a night program at Fairfield University in Connecticut, a Jesuit University for which I now serve on the board.

It was a degree that made a difference, not so much in getting a job, but in teaching me a new way to think. Fairfield taught me much about strategy, context, the power of words and images, history and culture. It didn’t dampen my drive to find a reporting job and build a career in journalism, but it also prepared me for a world that would change rapidly and in ways I never could have imagined when I began my studies.

The memories of beginning my career are part of the great appeal of becoming dean of the storied UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication.  At the school, we will help to shape the lives of students who will be tomorrow’s leaders in the world of journalism and communications. 

It is a world bound to change a half dozen times in these students’ lives. How can we prepare students for changes that may bring forms of communication that we can’t quite imagine in 2012?  I think the answer is to teach universal values as well as skills – values that are critical for reporters, editors, publishers, strategic communication executives, advertising writers, entrepreneurs and business leaders. I’m referring to values such as good writing, the integrity of information, the importance of serving community and an allegiance to truth. Values are going to guide a student’s life and offer a foundation when change demands flexibility. 

I have had multiple careers – four separate careers in fact. I started in the broadcast news business in Buffalo, N.Y., where I had moved with my husband after I completed my master’s, and where they were looking for the first woman to join the news team. I moved to Washington, D.C., after that and worked for 20 years in the nation’s capital as a reporter and anchor in both national and local journalism. 

I made what I thought would be a short term change of direction at the end of 1994 by accepting the job as executive director of the Family and Medical Leave Commission, a bipartisan commission established by Congress and run out of the Department of Labor. That led to an offer by then-Secretary of Labor Robert Reich to serve as his assistant secretary for public affairs and being confirmed twice by the Senate. 

As the Clinton administration wound down, I thought I might return to the news business, which was now in period of dislocation. Instead, I moved home to New Jersey (my dad had been diagnosed with a degenerative condition) and accepted a job as vice president at Carnegie Corporation of New York — the foundation begun by Andrew Carnegie 100 years ago this year. I have now worked in philanthropy longer than any other job in my career and seen much change in this decade.  

It has been a magical 12 years at Carnegie. I had the financial support to create a magazine, publish numerous reports and regular publications that translated scholarly research and information into journalistic products. I’ve experimented with and rebuilt a deep content website as well as tried to figure out how social networking could advance the ideas in education and international peace and security that animate our grant making.  

The greatest gift for a born journalist, however, was the opportunity to launch a grant-making initiative called the Carnegie Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. I began the work in 2002 with a goal of bringing some of America’s top research university journalism schools together to revitalize the work on campuses where tomorrow’s news leaders were being educated. The strategy called for deeper learning and a digital point of view. Carnegie turned to McKinsey & Co. to analyze what news industry leaders needed from university-based journalism schools. The industry said it wanted specialized students who understood context and culture and who could be flexible amid changes in how news is communicated to the public.

Carolina’s journalism school has been a star of this initiative. Becoming dean of the school is a great privilege. I know the power of the faculty and the promise of its talented students. I know following highly successful deans like Richard Cole and Jean Folkerts will be a challenge, but I also believe it is a job for which I’ve been preparing throughout my career. My twin passions are journalism and communications. I care deeply about what our students learn, and the futures for which they are preparing. This is not an era of unlimited economic opportunity. This is a time of cutbacks and economic limitations. Yet, our students will create the news and communication businesses of tomorrow. I believe tackling the challenges of this era is worthy of our best efforts. I am not only excited about the opportunities that Carolina offers; I am interested in the problems faced by the industry and the university. I hope to work with many leaders in the state to emphasize values, expand skills and invent the future.  

The journalism profession continues to experience massive upheaval. How can journalism schools better prepare their students for this new world?  How do you develop a curriculum that adheres to the basics of journalism while dealing with the new paradigm brought about by the 24-hour, instant news cycles?

Recent reports tell of massive layoffs throughout the news business, but particularly in American newspapers. About one third of the jobs in America’s newsrooms have been shed in the last decade or so. That is jaw dropping and terrifying for anyone in the midst of a journalism career. Yet, journalism schools are not being abandoned. Students are applying and attending in record numbers. Why the disconnect?  Young people are digitally native and see opportunity in all of this dislocation. 

There are positive indicators for news and information in this story about the massive dislocation in mainstream media. There is an appetite for news. Studies indicate more people are consuming news than ever before. The Web and mobile connectivity means young people know what is happening almost instantly both locally and nationally. The difference now is that news consumers are not loyal.  They will turn to whatever means to get news. A recent Pew Center study indicated that 92 percent reported that they use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day – often for free.

Students are surrounded by information. Those who are applying to UNC now were 7 years old when 9/11 changed America. It was after then that Google became a verb and the gateway to finding information. When Mark Zuckerberg entered Harvard in 2004, Facebook was only an idea for a campus, not a new way to communicate with the world. Creativity has been unleashed over the past decade. However, even with all of this digital change, I believe that ideas, values and the ability to communicate remain the most critical ingredients for future success. Someone still must have something to say even if they have a dozen different platforms on which to say it. 

Carolina’s journalism school has updated its curriculum in the past few years, and it will be incumbent on us to continue to challenge all of our assumptions. But teaching the basics of expression – good writing, good research and good storytelling – remain the same. Students today do need to know more, have a better understanding of culture and context, and be able to work digitally. They also need to understand the art of analysis and the science of databases and search. But from what I’ve seen, the school already is preparing its students well. I clipped an article from an industry magazine that talked about judging online news awards this year in which Carolina J-school students won top honors for their work in the News21 incubator called “Powering a Nation.” Quoting Seth Gitner, one of the judges: 

The UNC piece was an easy pick as the Best in Show. It has the best editing and story of any entry. It had all of the basic characteristics that make a good story: it had a well-defined character, it had exciting incidents that kept the viewer engaged, and it had conflict along with great emotion. The producers let the story play out in front of the camera. It wasn’t heavy on talking heads or visual metaphors – it was life as documentary.

One of the foundational ideas that underpinned the Carnegie Knight Initiative was the work of Abraham Flexner who studied medical schools early in the century for Carnegie Corporation of New York’s sister organization, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Flexner called for a complete change in medical education and articulated the notion of the teaching hospital, a place where students practiced under great medical professors – doctors.

Students in the award-winning News21 incubator at UNC study under great professors like Hugh Morton Distinguished Scholar Laura Ruel, an accomplished professional and inspired teacher who runs the program and is willing to experiment with new forms of storytelling. If the teaching hospital is a model, then UNC’s journalism and communication students should continue to produce content under the guidance of great professors. Penny Muse Abernathy, another experienced professional and the school’s Knight Chair for Journalism Digital Media Economics, has brought her students into North Carolina’s newsrooms to work with editors and publishers across the state to create new digital strategies to serve their communities. 

This real world experimentation is part of the great university tradition and something I’d like to work with the school’s talented professors and scholars to expand. It can benefit the students for sure, but also the larger community of news professionals and civic leaders. What unites us all — students, professors and professionals — is that journalism is the very essence of a democracy. In this time of change we must learn together.

What do you believe the future has in store for the newspaper industry?  So what can the school do to help newspapers find a successful business model?

I am not one who thinks newspapers are dead. But I think that change is going to continue for the foreseeable future, and it may escalate in pace. The Pew Center has done a number of interesting studies about news consumption. A recent one about local news consumption found a very nuanced picture. It discovered that the majority of people do not get their news from one source.  Most people turn to local TV for weather and traffic, local radio for traffic, newspapers for government decisions and civic affairs, and the Internet for the latest and the specific, such as information about restaurants and local businesses.

Earlier, I mentioned Penny Abernathy’s class. She has partnered with a number of North Carolina community newspapers to focus on specific problems facing business management. Together, they have produced interesting analysis and options that have had positive outcomes. Jock Lauterer, director of the school’s Community Media Project, and his students partner with N.C. Central University, Durham community, civic and church leaders, and local youth to report on the Northeast Central Durham community. They produce a vibrant newspaper and website with a strong audience. They continue to draw accolades and support. Ryan Thornburg recently won a prestigious Knight News Challenge grant to help rural N.C. newspapers develop sustainable business models around hyper-local news produced using public information and open source software.

Jock and Penny take their learning on the road in the summer, offering workshops to local newspaper pros about the latest techniques and digital opportunities. It helps create a feedback loop between professionals and professors that is rich and flexible enough to respond to emerging needs.

Scholars at the school are also looking at the impact of digital messages on real life questions. That kind of learning is important for those working outside the academy. We have just begun to understand the changes in advertising, editorial decisions and readers’ habits that digital platforms present. I think it was a prescient decision Jean Folkerts made to create the Reese Felts Digital News project (the digital news and audience research initiative created with UNC alumnus Reese Felts’ estate gift to the school) as a learning center in addition to being a content site. Professors at the school can use it to study how people interact with the content and learn about patterns that will be important for the news industry. 

Horace Carter Distinguished Professor Cathy Packer is leading the UNC Center for Media Law and Policy in a short-term study on policy questions around local news delivered by various digital and mobile platforms.  These kinds of enterprises help our professors remain nimble, and they share what they learn with North Carolina’s news business leaders. We are working to understand the changing news model – what is working and what is not.

We don’t have the answers to what tomorrow’s newspaper industry will look like. But we are preparing students to communicate using various platforms, and we are making sure that they, like the professors they study with, know the right questions to ask.

While trust in government institutions such as Congress is at incredibly low levels, journalism still has an image problem as well. What role can journalism schools play in helping improve the standing of journalists?

I think the phone hacking investigation and revelations in Great Britain expose the worst of journalism. They show a business out of control, willing to do anything to gain power and to sell a paper. The tradition in the United States has been much more one of service than that of Fleet Street, but even here the trust in news organizations is tracking lower along with all civic institutions.  

I am very impressed by Carolina’s J-school’s emphasis on ethics, journalism history and media law.   Students are imbued in the role of the media as a force for democracy. As a parent, I have wondered at times — especially during the turbulent teenage years — whether my daughter would move ahead with our family values. I learned from others that the key thing a parent can do is to stress the core values and hope that a child will cling to the strong roots that love, attention and values can create as the very center of a person’s life. My daughter is still in college, but I’m beginning to see that the core values we worked on from the earliest years are indeed her values. The roots are taking hold. 

I’ve met many UNC graduates recently, and I must say there is a Chapel Hill ethic – a values core – in these professionals that they trace back to their experience at the school. There is a rock solid tradition of excellence, a commitment to service, a belief in the mission of journalism. I believe we will produce the next generation of leaders for journalism in North Carolina and the world. The fact that our graduates are rooted in core principles will help renew the profession. But trust lost is not recaptured easily. It is a challenge we must keep on the front burner of the school’s mission.

What goals have you set for yourself and the school in the first year as dean?

I come with great enthusiasm and an awareness, through the Carnegie Knight Initiative, of how good the school is – its teachers, its researchers and its students. I plan on doing a lot of listening for the spring semester. I want to know more about the work underway and the major questions and needs of the faculty and school at this time of economic instability and retrenchment. 

I want to make sure we keep on the path set by Jean to explore the digital changes in the business so that our students are always on the cutting edge of change while being rooted in constant journalistic values.

I want to meet as many members of the larger North Carolina community as I can – students, alumni and professionals working in the field, including members of the N.C. Press Association. 

In my presentation to the university community during the dean search process, I outlined a few items that I would hope to accomplish. One that is urgent in the next six months is a South 2012 interdisciplinary project for the election year. As a political reporter, I know how pivotal the South always is in the national political conversation during presidential election cycles. There is a great strength at the university to research the South at this time of economic change, when the demographics and business underpinnings of the region are in transition. The J-school’s Ferrell Guillory is one of the leading experts on this subject and is already taking the lead on this project. Understanding these changes and the political dynamics of the region are critical. We will gather scholars across the campus to collaborate on what the picture of the South 2012 looks like. We believe our students can use their great communication and digital storytelling skills to bring the project’s data to life. With the conventions in the South in the summer of 2012 – Charlotte for the Democrats and Atlanta for the Republicans – the region will be in the spotlight. I would like our students and faculty talent to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.

Lastly, I will always be a phone call or email away from members of the NCPA. I’ve recently completed Bowers’ history of the school, “Making News,” and I know well that our school wouldn’t be what it is today without the association’s long standing commitment. I want to keep that relationship as strong as ever, and try to make it even stronger.