How a love for teaching led to a giant-sized career move

Why helping train young journalists and shape ideas about the industry makes sense amid media’s growing turbulence

Teaching is a calling that runs in my family.

My mother, most notably, spent 50 years as a middle school teacher in Gary, Indiana - one of the toughest jobs I can imagine. my stepfather, Eulis Williams, had one of the few teaching gigs which might be tougher, working at West Side High School in that challenging Indiana steel town.

There is something thrilling and gratifying about using the knowledge you have to help others — especially knowledge gained through the hard work of focusing on an area of expertise and learning as much as you can about it. 

(That’s why I get excited about the chance to speak on panels like the one I’m appearing on this evening in NYC titled The Media and Trump’’s Unprecedented Presidency - more on that below!) 

The thrill of helping is also likely why I’ve consistently taught on the side alongside my work as a critic and journalist — starting with time as  adjunct at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL — RIP and shoutout to the American Studies professor who first encouraged me to develop a course with her more than 20 years ago, Catherine Griggs. I’ve since taught at the University of Tampa, the Poynter Institute, Indiana University and Duke University, all while keeping up work as a TV critic and media analyst, first at the Tampa Bay Times and then at NPR.

All of this was rattling in my head when Washington and Lee University came to me with a dazzling offer to join the Knight Chairs of journalism across the country to teach journalism and media ethics at their school, while remaining a critic-at-large for NPR.

I know there are some who would wonder why anyone would move into teaching journalism at a time when the industry is so unstable. Media companies are constantly laying off staffers and it seems tougher than ever to imagine how young journalists can build careers to earn a good living and build families.

But shifting paradigms in journalism also breed new opportunities. The young students I’ve met are more than realistic about the job market and ambitious about finding new ways to create quality work. And there really isn’t a much better job around than getting paid to explain the world to an audience, day after day — especially at a news outlet that does quality work with impact.

As the Knight Professor of Journalism and Media Ethics at Washington and Lee, I expect to spend a bit more time in this space talking about media ethics, journalism trends and lessons for the field. In my work as a media critic, I’m often leaning on ethics codes to figure out what news outlets should be doing anyway — so this feels like a new way to work on the very familiar challenges facing journalists in the modern age.

One way to spread word about these issues is by speaking publicly. So I’m excited and grateful to note here that Joanne Lipman has invited me to participate in a panel at 5:30 today in New York City presented by The New York Historical looking at The Media and Trump’s Unprecedented Presidency. My fellow panelists are amazing journalists: Margaret Sullivan, Ben Smith and Kim Kleman. Click here for info on how to join us in person or sign up for the livestream.

If you’ve been reading this Substack, you know I’ll have some provocative thoughts of how Trump has treated media outlets in his second term and how the industry should respond. If you have any thoughts about what you’d like us to discuss, please let me know here or on social media — we need to put together as many smart ideas as possible to help today’s journalists through crushing circumstances.

My hunch is that, right now, there may not be a more important time to help budding journalists learn the craft and brainstorm on ways to help incisive, fact-based reporting survive all the attempts to undermine and replace it with propaganda and unfairly partisan messaging.