AEJMC Trailblazers of Diversity Interview with Tom Engleman

Speaker 1: Today is August 8,

2018. My name is Linda Shockley, and I'm interviewing Thomas Engleman. For the AEJMC

diversity or history interview project. Thank you, Tom, for agreeing to this interview.

Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: You're welcome. Please know that it will be

housed on the AEJMC website and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American history at the University

of Texas at Austin. So let's begin. Tell me about how you got interested in journalism.

Speaker 2: Oh, started back in high school, I was

recruited by Mrs. Stone, who was the yearbook advisor who said, I think you should work for

the school newspaper. Okay. And I did. So I got my start working on the school newspaper

in high school in Roanoke, Virginia, and went to college and worked for my college newspaper

and my college yearbook and took the one journalism course that they offered at my college

and decided this is exactly what I want to do. So I graduated, went into the Army for a little bit,

came out, went to graduate school of journalism at the University of South Carolina and worked

for the newspaper in Columbia. At the time I was the copy editor. Would you believe that somebody

who never had any copy editing experience before that was assigned to the copy desk,

and absolutely loved it. So that's how I got started from high school right

on through to my first newspaper job. Although when I was in college, I was

calling in sports scores and reporting for the Roanoke times and World News and the

Bristol Herald courier and the associated press in Richmond in the UPI in Richmond all about our

games, followed sports teams around all over the East Coast. So that's how I got started.

Speaker 1:

So could you tell us what years you were talking about? You graduated high school in 1960,

graduated from college in 1964, went into the Army for

almost a year, and then started graduate school at University of South Carolina in 1965. And was

there for two and a half years working, going to school part time working full time at a newspaper.

And what was the newspaper that you work for the state in Columbia, South Carolina that morning

daily? Can you talk a little bit about when you became aware of the need for greater diversity?

Speaker 2: Sure, it was a lobbyist newspaper.

There was not a person of color on the newspaper staff

was not a person of color when I was in graduate school in the School of Journalism,

not a person of color, as my fellow students said, Whoa, here we are in South Carolina.

Very large African American population, obviously in the state. And there is not a single person on

the newspaper staff, the professional newspaper staff, covering those communities. And that was

how I first recognized something has to be done. So we talked amongst students, the faculty,

mentors on the faculty about what we can do, and came up with a thesis project for my master's

thesis to find out what would be the attitude among the media among newspapers and broadcasters,

among even High School journalism teachers among college journalism programs in the state.

Speaker 1: Why are there no African Americans working for

newspapers? Why are they no African American studying journalism at the college level?

Speaker 2: So we started the project with my master's thesis

to find out what are the statistics basically behind this as well as the social information

behind this, this was all done in 1967. And I wrote my thesis in 1968, and graduated in 69.

So this was all being done at the very time that the nation was erupting in

the inner city of riots and the problems there. And of course, we were reporting that the

newspaper was reporting on all of this. But we were not reporting on it from a perspective of

who the people were, who were affected and why were they right? It was numbers,

how many people were injured. How many people's buildings were burned down and all of that.

05:01 Speaker 2: And guess what? The Kerner commission

report came out in the spring of 1968, after the 1967 riots and said exactly those same things.

Speaker 1: So you wrote a thesis

on this. And so what was the premise of your thesis? or What did you come up with?

Speaker 2: The analysis was that because of the attitudes

of the editors and the publishers and broadcast as well as print, they seem to be very favorable

about the whole idea of hiring people of color for the newspapers, but the age old, respond to us

if we could find the talent. Well, it's exactly what the Kerner commission report

pointed out is, that's an excuse, do something about it, and what can we do about it? That's,

that's the next chapter in my life after graduate school. So I wrote my thesis and

then the summary sentence was, there was cautious optimism among the media in South

Carolina at that point, that something could be done about it, cautious optimism.

Speaker 1:

And so, what happened next in the course of your pursuit of this topic and your career?

Speaker 2: Okay, I learned about the job

for Dow Jones and company. The job was as assistant to the director of the newspaper

fund, now called the Dow Jones newspaper fund. Paul Swanson, who was the executive

director at the time hired me as his assistant. That was, the job started in January of 1968.

That summer, through Paul's leadership dating back years before that,

there was a workshop in Washington, DC 50 years ago, called the urban journalism workshop that

was done at American University. I visited that workshop while I was learning this job

of assistant to the director of the newspaper Fund, which it was called back then. That was

the workshop with 20 students here at American University in Washington. And we are in Washington

right now and doing this interview 50 years later. So, we ran that first workshop as an

experiment as a pilot project to see if we could identify up to 20, we had 20 students of color,

who could love the job of Lang working with the language and writing.

Speaker 2:

Kids had loved to write, and we brought them into American and for four weeks, they learned

from mentors coming in from the newspapers in town, The Washington Post, the Washington star,

and other professional journalists in the area, what it was like to be in the field.

After four weeks, they published a newspaper. That was the goal of the project was to

have the students write, take pictures, write the cut lines, do the headlines, do the page layouts,

all the things involved in creating a newspaper for the first time they had ever done, it will

beg your pardon. There were two of the students in the workshop who had worked on their high

school newspapers, all the others, simply were identified by their high school English teachers

as having some writing potential. And that's what we were looking for as a talent. Now,

let me go back a little bit on this postman's, who was the person who hired me at the newspaper fund.

Speaker 2: Paul was executive director of the

Dow Jones newspaper and back then the newspaper fund. Paul had through his past experiences as a

managing editor of a newspaper in Minnesota in Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Paul had

operated a workshop for high school journalism teachers at Savannah State College in Georgia.

This workshop was aimed at bringing in that summer workshop, high school journalism teachers of color

to help them learn how to put out a better high school newspaper basically. And if they have

a journalism course that was fine, too, but basically, the workshop was trying to teach

them how to put out a high school newspaper. This was back in the early 60s when Paul was able to

persuade a board of directors that we need to do something more. This is in 1967. Before the Kerner

commission report ever came out, Paul persuaded the board of directors to put some money into

a summer workshop at American University, which I just mentioned, that would prepare some young

people in Identify and prepare some young people to be journalists. He raised the money

from the Washington post the Washington star, and from at that point, theta sigma five, which is now

women in communications, and they may have changed their name cents. But these three organizations

put some money in, and also provided the names of mentors who would be able to be at the workshop,

to give first hand experiences, and talk to the kids about what it's like to be in this business.

So Paul was the innovator of all of this, and a person whose name hardly ever comes up in the

history of diversity. But Paul was the one he was the mind behind so much of this that's gone on,

since I was simply the tool, the person that carried his ideas forward and expanded on them.

Speaker 1: So you're holding something, a newspaper there?

Speaker 2: Yes. This was the first

newspaper produced by high school students. After an urban journalism workshop is

called the new voice. The students wrote the copy, took the pictures,

covered a demonstration in Washington, that was the lead story, they covered this and wrote on it.

Speaker 2: They had some information on the back page.

fashions, things are top topics that interested the kids, they followed up the story ideas,

it wasn't the journalism professors or the professional journalists who were telling

them what to write about, they wrote about what they thought would interest them. So after the

workshop, after the workshop was over, they printed, we printed a lot of copies of this,

and gave each of the students a stack of them, take it home, show your mom and dad, show your

neighbors, show your friends what you did this summer. And maybe by just showing other people,

what they did, would not only encourage them to perhaps consider a career in journalism,

but also let others know that something is being done out here to encourage young writers.

Speaker 2: So now Mr. Swenson resigned from the news

fund and went on to take another job. And then that's what happened. And left the newspaper fund

late in 1968, to teach journalism at Temple University, and I was named assistant director

of the newspaper fund. They were trying me out to see if I could do this job. And

so starting then, I worked until the 1990s, well over 25 years as director of the newspaper fund.

Speaker 1: So what did you do with the

high school workshop program after that success? Would you call it a 1966 success in this way?

Speaker 2: We did some

surveys over the years we have surveyed,

past participants are to see what their interests are. And we found that, yes, indeed, they were

interested enough after that first workshop, to consider going to journalism school or just

going to college to perhaps work on the college newspaper. So they got their first interest by

Speaker 2: the workshop, okay. And then

we said what's next. So we started looking around the country, and we found three other schools,

other universities that would be interested in hosting a similar workshop in the summer of 1969.

The premise was, the newspaper fund would provide some money, but universities you

need to go out. And we will go with you to see if we can get newspapers in those cities to

match the money. The same as the washington post in the Washington star did in that first workshop.

Let's go see if we can get other workshops started with the same formula, that is newspapers,

providing some money, newspaper, fun, providing some money, and then the newspapers and not only

provides some cash to help support the workshop that's abandoned lunches, and take care of the

transportation of kids to go out on assignments to pay the director of the workshops and money and

pay for the cost of the lab paper, or the workshop newspaper, but also to provide your reporters and

your editors and your photographers to come in to the workshop as mentors for the kids.

Speaker 2: So that expanded to for

the next year and it grew and multiplied Over the years, at one point, I believe we had well

over 20 workshops scoring it. At the same time nationwide, this grew into a nationwide program.

I don't have the total numbers, but I would guess it would be into the 1000s of high school students

Speaker 2: who went through the workshop and of the 1000s.

Hundreds ended up going to journalism school or working on their college paper, eventually taking

internships at newspapers, and eventually full time jobs at newspapers. So we're able to show

through the studies of past participants, what the success rate was. So then that built

on everything that the newspaper fund was doing. It was a recruiting ground for not only

the future workshops for the high school kids, but also the internship programs

at the newspaper fund were operating and from their excellent jobs in the industry.

Speaker 1: So you were

creating a pipeline, that was your hope?

Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's exactly

what it was. It was a, there was a pipeline from high school, to college to the business.

Speaker 1:

Right. So let's talk a little bit about the internship programs that you just mentioned. So

the fun had reporting internship programs, and the copy editing internship program.

And you talk about recruiting and trying to get African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, more

students of color into your internship program. So explain some of those things that you did.

Speaker 2: To get those students who also apply, and

once you have a list of participants, you have a database, you have a mailing list, or whatever we

would call it back then this is the day before you had the huge computer databases of information.

But we were developing databases of names and addresses and we kept in touch with the

students. We send surveys out, we send them newsletters, we keep in touch with all the

former participants. And of course, not all we're interested in continuing. But by sending it out,

we were able to keep in touch with people and let them know what the opportunities were

for internships, like I said, and eventually in jobs. We had a reporting internship program.

In the early years dating back to 1960. There was a reporting internship program that the

newspaper fund sponsored, bringing talented writers in the newspapers in the summertime

as interns, and we gave him a scholarship to help them continue in college.

Then there was that which continued over two decades, we have an intern price competition back

in the 60s and extended way into the 1970s. And will go beyond where newspaper editors recommend

college students that they had hired on their own, and they recommended them to

the newspaper fund for a scholarship. So we gave away scholarships for that program. Then,

through Paul swensons leadership, we created an editing internship program trying to find

future leaders for the newspaper business, bringing them into the copy desk.

And then from there as a almost direct path into newspaper management, copy editing,

city editor, managing editor, and some publishers have come out of this.

Speaker 2: Over the years, we had a program

that was similar to that because we were finding there was very little in the way

of numbers of people of color at colleges and journalism schools of journalism. These are

the major colleges all over the country, very few people of color as students at those schools.

Speaker 2: So what do we do? We started working with

historically black colleges HBCUs as the acronym historically black colleges and universities,

so we started working with them to identify their students who could then be plugged

into our existing internship program. The talent wasn't there. The talent has always been there.

But until the newspaper fund and and of course, many newspapers and other organizations

went out looking for them and encouraging them to think about this career.

Nothing was done until that happened. So it all started through high school workshops

and internships, taking the internship programs and going out and finding where the talent is

and encouraging the talent for it was and it was the historically black colleges and and getting

applications giving them and I'll portunity to be on in a newsroom and learning firsthand how

you become a newspaper editor or a reporter. And then things started taking off from there.

Speaker 1: So one of those early participants was

Mario Garcia, the great newspaper designer. What did he do? What program did he come into?

Speaker 2: Reporting Program.

This was the reporting internship program. Over the years, I have lost all of the dates and the

perhaps, and all of the very specific things that we knew firsthand way back when.

Speaker 2: But Mario was a college student

in Florida, went to the Miami news, if I'm correct, as an intern, and he actually went

over as a reporting intern if I'm correct. And they found that he also had some layout and design

talents. He had an idea of how you can design this page. So they moved him in a way from reporting

over to the design part of a newspaper. And that's how he really caught on and, and develops a merio

has become a the nation's at one point, or leading newspaper design expert. So yeah,

those are the kinds of examples of talent that's out there, that if you send them to a newspaper

and give them the opportunity to ban themselves as a young journalist and find what their

specialties interests are, then they'll develop and look at what we have. We have many leaders in

our industry now who found their way from being a newspaper reporter, newspaper, copy editor,

and then newspaper management and they are the leaders in our industry, many of them today.

Speaker 1: I think Wanda Lloyd is one of those people.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. I

think she was at USA today for a while and she was managing USA Today. And she was

director of the school of journalism at Ana State College.

Yes. And at Savannah State College was the early High School journalism teacher

workshop that Paul Swinson provided some money for the newspaper fund and provided some money

for Savannah State College to identify some teachers to come in. And those teachers,

as I learned later, have brought some students with them. Wanda was one of the

high school students who came along with her teacher to Savannah State. To that workshop,

she would have been, I would gather the editor of next year's high school newspaper.

So the teacher was learning how to prepare a newspaper, how to be a newspaper advisor.

Speaker 2: And she had along with her the editor

of next year's high school paper. So this is how it's done. You go, bring people together, who have

an interest in this field and encourage them and let them see that when the light bulb

goes off in their heads, if I can do this, I can do this. And that's what makes it work.

Speaker 1: Now, there was a period

where you had a lot of demand from the media to provide them with the verse interns and entry

level people. And so you started the minority editing program and a minority Reporting Program

will these efforts get into the historically black colleges to bring people of color out?

Speaker 2: The college wasn't at the traditional journalism

programs, the numbers weren't there. So we went to war, the numbers work. And in order to make

this happen, we created new programs for people of color. African Americans, Native Americans

at some point in the smaller members, but certainly Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans,

we created these programs to go out and recruit. So it was a major recruiting effort.

Speaker 1: And so what did you find

within the industry in terms of other efforts and activities, working along with other groups like

with starting job fairs and career fairs?

24:26 Speaker 2: Things started taking off once

we had the workshops of the high school kids in the internships. Then we have other organizations

who said we need to get involved in this. The Associated Press managing editors Association,

the American Newspaper Publishers Association, the the American Society of newspaper editors,

all those alphabet soup or our organization say sn E and AP me and surf word was the full alphabet

almost as well as As a society professional journals back then called sigma Delta Chi,

we had women in communications back then called theta Sigma Phi.

Speaker 2: So there were

organizations that realized and we can get involved with this too,

there's a need for us to do something as an organization. And of course the agency, which we

had been involved with over the years, created a minority and communications division,

the Mac division. These were efforts done by the major organizations, after all of

the early workshops were done, and people realized we need to get involved in this too.

Speaker 2: So the newspaper fund

was very much involved in the very early stages. And then it caught on with the

other organizations creating their various committees, minorities committees, they were also

secondary education committees, high school journalism committees, or journalism education

committees created by organizations such as the American Society of newspaper editors

to work with colleges and Consortium, we will bring into the various committee meetings of asnd,

college journalism deans, so that the editors and educators are working together to find work. And

what can we do as an organization or as a committee of an organization to advance

the recruitment of young people for the news industry.

Speaker 2: So I’ve worked on a

lot of these groups and across all disciplines, from academia to professional organizations,

and even scholastic journalists traveled all over the country at many, many, almost every convention

that there was of editors trying to recruit more editors to be involved in the programs to

hire interns. A lot of recruiting going on not just of the students who we're trying

to bring in, but also of the editors who will be hiring the students trying to build up the

interest along with a lot of work being done on that. Thank goodness Dow Jones has provided

and expense accounts, so I could get on an airplane and travel. And I did a lot of that.

Speaker 1: So to what extent do you think

the industry is meeting the challenges of diversity? The diversity challenges still exist?

Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Yes.

Speaker 2:

Could you ask that again? Stop there for a second. And this can be edited out?

Speaker 1:

To what extent do you think the challenges of diversity are being addressed?

Today? Are we ahead for all of these efforts? Are we falling behind? Where do we stand?

Speaker 2: What we need to do is to look at the

panel members who appear today on the various television shows from Meet the Press to

on cable television shows and so forth, and you will see people of color as leaders

in this industry today. And that's that's core it has come to today is we have

very smart people who are in this business, people of color, who are now

providing leadership to the newspaper industry. And that's, that's where we've come in, how did it

happen? It started, as I mentioned earlier, from high school level, to the college level and to

internships to full time jobs. And as those talented young people became middle aged

people of color and moved into advanced positions at newspapers from let's just say city editor, to

managing editor to publisher, and we've had some publishers who have moved up through those ranks.

That's how it happens. It's moving up through the ranks, so to speak in the news industry,

but it has to start somewhere it started 50 years ago with the high school workshop.

Speaker 2: And,

and not just because there was a Kerner commission report, which was basically called

out by newspapers and broadcasters for the lack of employees of color. Not just because of that,

newspapers did this because they felt it was important to do for our nation,

for our democracy, in order to have our newspapers reflect our communities, wherever they are small,

medium, Large communities to have the newspaper staff reflect that and not just in numbers,

but also to bring in those attitudes and those opinions and those experiences to the editorial

boards, the places where decisions are made about what's going to be in tomorrow morning's

newspaper. How, how can we better reflect our communities, our whole community, not just part

of the community that was traditionally covered back in the 30s 40s 50s 60s, perhaps but starting

after the Kerner commission report, we, as an industry as a news industry felt we need to do

this on our own not because we're forced by the Federal Communications Commission,

the FCC, forcing us to do some additional work to bring people of color into our organizations,

or else your license might be affected. Newspapers didn't have licenses, still don't,

we don't have a license to publish a newspaper, we don't have the government breathing down our neck.

Newspapers are doing this because it's the right thing to do. That's why we are where we are today.

Speaker 1: Now, the news industry has struggles

with subscriptions and advertising revenue, and the more and more data and digital kinds of

outlets. Some people are being laid off, lots of people are being laid off in this business and

we're finding that it's the people of color, who in many cases are

being laid off. And so then those numbers start to dwindle. What do you think

news organizations can do? What should they be doing?

Speaker 2: This, it's not just the number of people that

it's when the depth of coverage of our communities is when we're the size of newspapers, in terms of

page size is down. At many community newspapers, it's all about small and medium sized newspapers,

page size weighed down, staff are basically cut in half at many papers. So if your staff is cut in

half, that means you can only do half the amount of reporting. So what do you report, and it's the

leadership at the top of the newspapers who will say we still need to have the full coverage of our

community, even though we're not doing as much of it, we need to have the full coverage of our

community. That's the challenge of newspapers today to make sure that the coverage, even

though it's less coverage at many small and medium sized newspapers is going to continue to reflect

the community's hope that that's happening in, in the newspapers, the larger newspapers, generally,

not much of a problem. There's still we have our major national newspapers still out there covering

news and politics and society and all the elements of our country. But to make sure that it's covered

in a way that the diversity of the news coverage reflects the diversity or of our country.

Speaker 1: Now, do you think there's

a role for academia to play, particularly in communities where the professional press is being

cut back or they don't have the financial resources that in some cases, college students,

college media need to take over trying to cover communities and also providing

more diverse staff to take over coverage?

Speaker 2: I don't know, Linda, I'm not. I'm not

familiar enough. Now, to give a good answer to that question. What could colleges do? I

don't know what else colleges can do now, other than to continue to try to recruit young people

of color who represent their communities and their states and in the nation. to go out and recruit

the best young writers and editors they can recruit to be journalism students would be that

would be the answer to that, perhaps to also for the college newspapers, to make sure that they are

representing not just the college population in terms of demographics, but also to go out

and find people of color, who could end up in the news industry. So many people who enter newspaper

jobs over history, have not studied journalism, but they have worked on their college papers. And

it's getting that practical experience, that is the most important thing and the talent is there.

Speaker 2: We just need to continue to go and dig for

the talent and find that talent that starts at the high school level, and encourage them to do what

they love what the young people love to do, and that they love to write, they love working with

the language. And that's still a goal. an ageless goal to find young people who would like to write.

Speaker 1: I want to back up a little bit and talk about

the newsroom, college enrollment surveys, and the college graduation rates and studies because the

news fun pay played a significant part in those censuses of who's going to college to who's

majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. And then at some point,

you introduced an element of, of students of color, going to

school for journalism and kind of broadening the schools that were sampled, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we did

talk about that and got an annual survey and we hired researchers to do annual surveys of

who's going to journalism school. What are they majoring in? What subjects are

they majoring in? And going back into the early years went back when I was involved back in the

late 60s and into the 70s. As many as half of all journalism students or communication

students, or were majoring in what we would call news editorial journalism.

What we watched over the years was the percentage of news editorial journalism majors declined,

while the percentage of advertising and public relations students increased broadcasting students

of broadcast majors paid about the same. But these editorial declines. And that was a

phenomenon we watched as it happened. Where does that leave us today? Perhaps with the way things

are going, the attitude toward newspapers or the media now, I'm hopeful that more young

people will say, Whoa, this is an important job to have in order to keep our democracy

going. And that is the job of a journalist is very important for a state so to speak.

And I'm hopeful that will be as much of a career encouragement as the Watergate years.

Speaker 2: They were attributed to

a huge increase in the number of journalism students. Perhaps that will happen again,

with the current attitude of negative attitudes about the news media, the fake news, so to speak,

out there. I don't know whether it's real fake news or not. I like to see examples

of fake news, or it is really fake news. I'm not sure if we're getting into real specifics

on that. But with all the negative information that's out there. But that's where we are now.

Speaker 1: Well, that brings up an interesting point. And I

guess one of the things that we're confronted with it, the news fun is how to encourage people to go

into career in journalism. It's always been kind of an uphill battle for students who say they're

interested in journalism, and then maybe their parents try to discourage them or somebody else

tries to discourage them. And now, journalism as a career is kind of being disparaged

on a national scale. So the challenge for kids going into journalism is

finding a negative perception of the profession. And then some of the pushback

from people who are being covered, that's always been an issue. So how did you deal

with kids who said, Well, you know, that doesn't pay that much, or that kind of stuff?

Speaker 2: Pay was always an excuse,

in many ways. Sure. It's a very real excuse. You have the bread and butter on the table or meat on

the table and then buy that car and pay rent and all that money is very important in that respect.

But the early attitudes that we found way back in the 60s when this was happening was there

were no role models. Mom was a teacher. Dad was in politics or as a community organizer, perhaps.

My aunt is a nurse. Those were the examples that people of color young people of color head,

in their families and among their neighbors. There were no other journalists out there. But now there

is about how we continue to encourage these young people who now see the role models out there to

pursue a career in journalism. We need to continue many of the programs that we have out there, the

internships and so forth need to continue, but the attitude part of this is going to be a tough sell.

I don't envy you wonder and the newspaper found and editors around the country and how do you

continue to find talented young people to be in your newsrooms with all the negative attitude

about our own industry, when we know that we're not the bad guys, we are doing the best job we

can to report fairly and, and as accurately as possible, what the news is of the day, and we have

opinions. opinions are just part of the operation. The actual news reporting is something that's very

basic and needs to continue. So that reporting reflects who we are, what our nation is, and who

our citizens are in the United States are and, and we have built up a diverse nation

back, but dating back in the 1800s 1900s. We are a diverse nation, and we are a strong nation because

of that diversity. And we need to continue that and make sure our newspapers are reflecting that.

Speaker 1: Are there anything, any points that you

would like to make or anything that I didn't touch on one that you think it's important to note?

Speaker 2: Nope, I've just been as proud as one can be

to have been involved in this industry, to have been afforded the opportunity to,

to help in my small way. where we are today to help find young people to teach young people I

was going to be a high school journalism teacher. I decided early on that yes, I can be a high

school journalism teacher or an English teacher at that point doing the high school newspaper as

a sidebar. But I chose to go into the newspaper business itself. So yes, I

am early thinking about being a teacher, my mother was a teacher, you know. So that's what

my motivation was to be a teacher even though I'm working in a newspaper company.

How do you be a teacher? You try to run programs that will help

prepare young people to be future journalists. My two loves are teaching and journalism.

Speaker 2:

And you encountered that in that whole process, once again, hundreds of people and affected 1000s

of students who were considering journalism as a career or going are actually planning

to go into journalism as a career and some of the people that you met and knew that impressed. You.

You chose Sam Adams, Professor, African American from Kansas, Kansas to run a training program

and phrases at Temple University who brought 1000s of kids,

many hundreds of kids, if not 1000s of young people through his internship programs. And

names and we heard at a luncheon earlier today. And outfits, Patrick Akron Beacon journal aysel,

more Philadelphia Inquirer, I can go on and on and on about the people who I was able and had the

honor to rub elbows with and share a beverage with occasionally at various conventions, and people I

work very closely with over the years, Jerry sasse with the Gannett Foundation, who was an enormous

person, encouraging young people and working with journalism educators over the years,

working with other foundation directors and newspaper editors, Newspaper Publishers,

journalism Dean's all over the country who shared this goal of finding the best most talented

young people we can find for the news industry.

Speaker 1: Okay, it was my honor.

Thank you very much. We appreciate you spending time I appreciate you to say that.

It was one of the mentors that I had that was bringing you on to the staff of the newspaper

fund when I was director you And that was awesome. I learned I'm so proud of you.

Speaker 2: Thank you very much. Thank you

AEJMC Trailblazers of Diversity Interview with Tom Engleman

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