Interview with Dr. Edward Trayes | Briscoe Center Digital Collections

Transcript

Ed Trayes Trailblazers Interview Karen Turner: I'm Karen Turner at Temple
University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And this is AEJMC Trailblazers of Diversity Oral History
Project. This interview will be housed at the AEJMC headquarters in Columbia, South Carolina,
and the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin and available here
on the Worldwide Web. I'm talking with Dr. Edward Trayes, Professor Emeritus
of Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University. Good morning, Ed!
Edward Trayes: Good morning!
KT: Well, let's just get started, OK? This has been an interview years in the making,
so we're really excited to hear from you. Give us a sense…we'll start off your early life,
where you grew up, where you went to college and how you ended up being a journalism professor.
ET:
I was…born at the tail end of the Depression, May the 4th 1938, in a farmhouse in rural
Pennsylvania, just outside Bangor. It was a wonderful childhood, and growing up…
after the farmhouse, my parents moved into town and that opened up a whole new world for me.
It seemed that anything I wanted to do I could do. It was a place where no one locked their doors,
and we left early in the morning to do whatever. And as long as we were home for dinner,
it was fine. My first real job
came because someone else didn't want to do it anymore, which was delivering 100 newspapers
a day for the Bangor Daily News, which was a tabloid newspaper of about four or eight pages;
it was never six. It was…if you did four, it was fine. If you did eight, it was fine.
It was printed on a flatbed press, and it was typically late because they always had
wet breaks because they stored, I found out years later, it was because they stored their
rolls of newsprint on the side rather than on an end. And it created a weak spot. So,
you know, I spent a lot of time waiting for the papers to be printed before I could run my route.
And in the meantime, I can still recall pretty much where everything was in that small newspaper,
two-lined type machines, the job press composing area.
ET: And you went through a little door, oh, stereotypic.
And then it was this press that came from I don't know where. Anyway, it was a real break for me,
the first in terms of what happened later in my life. The first stop on my route was a
photographer and his studio, and he insisted I bring the paper to him in the darkroom
where he spent most of his time. And before you know it, I got quite an education in photography.
My second stop was billiards, and I think that worked pretty well also.
ET: Anyway, I did that and I always worked from the time I was about nine or ten years old
until the time I retired from Temple about a year ago.
ET: In between, I could never have predicted how my life went. There were always people in
my life who popped up to give me a nudge one way or another, and I typically took it, you know,
whatever was suggested or hinted at. And sometimes it was just plain luck. I think if I learned one
thing, no one does their life by their own, especially when it comes to a career. There are
things that happen. There are things that pick you rather than you intentionally going and saying,
“Well, I'm going to be this,” and doing everything you think you should be doing toward that end.
ET: That didn't happen with me. I followed the string and things happened,
and I feel fortunate that it went the way it did. I was a college teacher for 57 years;
the last 53 were at Temple in the same office. I never moved.
And on retirement, the Dean says, “You're not going anywhere.”
ET: So I'm still in that office. I'm the dean's adviser, and I still have
the opportunity to work on projects of my own choice and do what the dean
would like me to do. I have a phone call coming up with him
in about a week where we're going to plan out what's going to happen during this pandemic and
in terms of how we're doing the school…going to school. That's always the way it's been.
KT: Well, and let me just stop you there, because one thing you did not mention is about
college, and I know that your college was very important to you, so I want you to be able to
give a shout out, right?
ET: Right. In my family, and as far as I know, I'm the first person to go to college
and I went to college that was operated by our denomination, the evangelical United Brethren
Church Albright College in Reading Pennsylvania. I wasn't going to go to college. It wasn't even
on my radar. I was in the business course and I had three years of shorthand to three years of.
Can you imagine this? Typing and bookkeeping in one thing and another. And then the minister of
my church began talking to me about school, and some of my friends in high school were
going to college. So I started to explore it and it worked out that I went to Albright. And
without them, my parents, I would able to graduate with no loans or anything like that.
ET: But once one thing after another happened, as far as journalism is concerned,
I worked on the college publications, but one day someone I hardly knew,
I happened to mention that he was leaving his job as a part time staffer at the Red Eagle in town.
I went right down there and the first person I saw was my high school baseball coach, who was the
assistant Sunday editor. Well, one thing led to another and they never told me I was hired. But I
would go in and they would give me a voucher. And sometimes it would be a couple of times a week.
Sometimes in the summer it would be all summer long and they never told me I was fired,
but I kept working there and I kept listening to all the people who wanted to give me advice
and. I got an education that I never bargained on, and I loved it.
ET: I loved the Amish barn, raising and walking across part of the United States with British
paratroopers. You just couldn't invent it. And later on a good day for me, was my wife Mary
accompanied me to work and sit with me through a shift, and no one said a word.
And that was the way that all went. I, at the end of it all, I heard about Penn State
and the fact that you could go there for free if you ran a dormitory, and I wrote a letter,
a couple of letters and I wound up as in charge of the dorm for the Penn State football team,
which was a challenge in itself. But I got a master's degree out of it. And the last time
I was in Carnegie Building, where the journalism school was, I was passing a faculty office
and as I passed the office, the professor’s head popped up and said, “Ed!”
ET: And it was John Barrow, who is one of my favorite professors who said, “Do you have a
minute?” Yeah. He says Dow Jones is looking for an assistant to the director of the newspaper of the…
What was it called? The Newspaper Fund, that's what it was. The Newspaper Fund Inc.
And he says, “Why don't you give this person a call?”
Well, New York, I promised that I will work with the Eagle after I graduated and well, I did work…
worked there for…
ET: And then eventually went to New York and met with Paul Swenson. Uh, who was renting an
apartment and he and his wife, Mildred, so I had my interview and I heard years later
that Mildred told them to hire that boy. So I wound up at the ripe old age of 23 as assistant to
the director of the Dow Jones. Or what is now the Dow Jones News Fund, but then it was the Newspaper
Fund Inc. It had a few other iterations in the name, but I think this Dow Jones News Fund is the
one that will stick for the foreseeable future because the nature of the business has changed.
ET: So much is not just newspapers, as we all know anyway. Paul Swensen had been
five years as the managing editor of the Minneapolis Star and another five years as
managing editor of the Tribune. I could not have had a better experience at this
stage of my life than to be mentored and taught by Paul Swensen, a giant in so many ways.
And even now, it was Paul who really set the structure for what the Dow Jones News Fund it is
today. Paul eventually came to Temple the year after I joined the faculty,
and that was a period of time there that was special to me. He went on after a few years
to the American Press Institute and then ultimately retired and did consulting.
ET: Trying to remember. I worked at the news front for The Newspaper fund for a while and then
I took a stint in the Marine Corps and then came back to the news fund and realized that
44 Broad Street might be, you know, nirvana for some people. But for me, a country boy, it wasn't
what I wanted when I had to walk to the end of the other hall
and open the window and look out on an exchange place and look at the sky to see where it was
cloudy or bright or anything like that. So I really started thinking about what to do next.
And in the meantime, I started a doctoral program at Columbia University,
and Paul would allow me to leave early so I could make my classes. And that turned out to be
ET: Another turning point and another place where possible. Swenson, one of many people
who influenced me in the course of my life, there always seemed to be
someone who was like an icebreaker who would come up with something or make something possible
that I normally wouldn't even think of. And if I sat here, I could fill an hour
with the people who have helped me and helped me have the career I had and become the person I am.
ET: I went from Albright to Penn State to Columbia, and then I. I got a call one day
that Seton Hall University was looking for someone and it was from someone I mentioned that I was
trying to consider other options. His name is David Walsh. I never met him. But he took the
time to remember what I told them on the phone. Because we were talking about something else:
Newspaper fund business. And he remembered me, and he called me. I went over to the
Catholic University. I am an evangelical in the United Brethren, and I had this interview
with Father Hakim. And he says, “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”
And I said, “I'm Protestant.” He smiled broadly and said, “You can be saved.”
ET: And I was hired and I taught there for three years. I realized that
doing the doctorate at Columbia
wasn't for me. And one of my Penn State teachers was at the University of Iowa, and I applied.
ET: And I would end up being accepted, and I received a teaching fellowship that enabled
me to do all of my coursework, plus what I did at Columbia in one year.
And that meant that I could go back to Seton Hall, write my dissertation, and teach at the same time.
so that was another one of those breaks. Sometimes people you don't even meet, but who
remember and take an interest and take the time. I'm forever grateful. It was another one of those
forks in the road, just as Jim Markham at Iowa was. Anyway, I was the advisor to the newspaper.
ET: The newspaper was pretty aggressive, and it wasn't
controlled by the university. I was asked to read everything before it showed up in print,
and I refused. And from then on, things got a little rough.
They closed the newspaper and the students, these nice young Catholic Day students protested. They
took to the streets in South Orange, New Jersey, and made page one of OBS. Romano
and a lot of other places. But it was time for me to move on and I got a couple of offers.
But the one that interested me the most was Temple in the late 1960s. Temple at that time
was independent. It was founded by Russell Cornwell as a Knight School, as part of a
church estate that he ran. And in fact, that building still stands in the center of the campus.
Eventually, it morphed into a day students, but it was a place where students who were
first generation college students got a shot, and I liked that idea a lot that didn't have any
ET: Pretense. It just gave a good education, and I like the idea that a lot of the students were
like me and the way I camem up, and I just felt that I wanted to do that rather than go to a
school that was much more prestigious at the time as things worked out. Temple blossomed, the state
became affiliated with the university and vice versa. And there was this infusion of buildings
all over the campus as it expanded and at once integrated with the North Philadelphia community.
I loved it from the first, I think. It was just meant to be because I never really looked
elsewhere for a job. My job was my, my vocation and my mission to do the best I could where I was
playing it. And that was a Temple University along with maybe five or six other journalism professors
who and I was the youngest by far. I was in my late 20s. I remember we were in two row houses
at the corner of Broad and North streets in North Philadelphia and
the faculty offices were…
So I am here now. We were very good friends for many, many years.
(some missing sound)
ET: He had the bath… No, I had the bathtub and he had the heat control for the two off.
This is but somehow we worked it out and near the end of that first semester,
I remember the six of us walking over to what was called the Annenberg Hall. It had just been built
and certified for occupancy. And we wound up. Picking offices and since I was the youngest
and the newest leader was hired before I was, I got the office that was left
and within a couple of years we were carving up classrooms and seminar rooms
for more faculty offices because we grew exponentially. At one point,
our enrollment, I think it was in the 80s, was more than a thousand. But.
It turned out that journalism spawned so many other departments within the school:
advertising, and then something that was called public relations and communication,
and it became part of speech communication, and I don't know what the name of it is now.
But there was one department after another that came out of journalism. It was like
we gave birth to what, what has become the culture of media and communication today. Klein
was no stranger to Temple. He probably taught from the time he was very young. Part time
because he was in television until he passed within the past few years.
ET: A wonderful man who was very much,
a part of the heart and soul of Temple in our school over these many decades.
KT: And let me just ask you to talk a little bit more about
Lou Klein, who he was since the building is named
after him. Like maybe a tad about his background so that everybody will understand.
ET: Lou Klein was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
He never left Philadelphia. It seemed he was an early pioneer in television and had
a lot to do with some of the early programming. And my memory may fail me here, but I want to
say that he was a mover and shaker for Band Stand. It wasn't the only one, but he was in it.
And he was that kind of a guy. He would innovate and work with people and mentor people, and
he lived his life for other people. I remember not knowing him, but knowing of him
and knowing that he taught for us part time and he ran this TV station and did all and a matter of
other things in the city to just come to one of my classes and talk. He didn't know me
from anyone. I was this kid who asked him. He came without question. And it was the beginning of a
lifelong friendship for the two of us. And I would marvel at how he would continually show
up and talk with young people. It was like he was investing
in the future, which I think he was and I think was very important to him.
KT: So well, you as an editor, you had that in common, didn’t you?
ET: Yes. Yes. Yes.
You should know that. Yeah, yeah, I would have to agree. And in a way without ever saying so,
Lou was a mentor of mine for all the time he was at Temple and I can't say enough good about him.
ET: And when it came time for him to give back, he gave back in incredible ways. And it was
only fitting and right that we name the school after him because he had such an association
with the university and with our school. He loved our students. And truth be told, I think he
truly enjoyed every moment of his time at Temple and it spanned decades.
KT: You almost as long as Lou Klein. Yes, he started in 1967.
ET: Yeah, yeah, He was before me, but not by much. And he would always talk about how many
years he had and everything like this. And I would say under my breath. But you were part
time and I'm full time, and that was kind of a little joke I had that I never told him.
But he was very proud of the fact that he had such a long period of service at Temple.
ET: Well, there is a question about what Temple was like when I came down for my interview,
and during my first year, it was around the time of the Columbia Avenue protests in Philadelphia.
ET: And they were racial. And it was a very tough time. Frank Rizzo was the
police commissioner and he took a very strong stance against the protests, rather… and.
It set the tone for what was going on in Philadelphia in succeeding years.
I won't go into all of the things that happened. I can just tell you that there was
tension and the university was right in the heart of it and it affected me.
In a variety of ways, and I think it probably gave rise to my interest in minority hiring.
[phone rings - slight break in interview]
ET: Can we cut in right after that? And l just, I remember the question,
I can just pick it up. George Daniels: You can start now.
ET: Temple, in the late 60s, was an independent college and university, and it was over by
Broad St., which is the main artery in the city. The cross street for Temple Cecil,
was Columbia Avenue. And it was a scene of racial protests during the late 60s.
They were handled very well. And Philadelphia had a history of conflict for decades following.
And now I'd like to think that things are on a much better plane than they were.
Frank Rizzo was the police commissioner in the late 60s.
ET: That seemed to be almost like
oil and water in terms of not mixing or not looking for common ground as much as
trying to control what I and others felt were some legitimate considerations of the time.
I think that affected me to the point where I became interested in
minority hiring and recruiting and especially among newspapers in major cities. One of the first
things I did as a faculty member at Temple was to conduct a survey. I think I did it in 1967. All
of the major general circulation daily newspapers across in the 20 largest cities of the United
States. I simply wrote to them and asked them how many people were in each newsroom
position and I listed the positions and how many of them were minority. And to my amazement,
most of them wrote back. And most of them were almost Lily White, and I wrote up the article.
And. I’d say it to Ed Emory, who is the editor of Journalism Quarterly.
And I remember getting a phone call from him.
ET: Soon after I sent the article he said, I really like your article and
I would like to run it in the fall 1968 issue of Journalism Quarterly. Well beyond throwing,
it would be my first published article. And it was going to be the lead article
in the journalism quarterly, and it started me on a
track where I became active with Sigma Delta Chi, which is the society of professional journalists.
ET: We set up advisory stations across the country almost one or two in every city and every state,
and that worked out pretty well a place where people who were interested in working with
minority young people or professionals could go and get a start and get it become part of the
conversation as far as improving the level of minority participation in media.
KT: Um, and let me just ask you this, if you were not at Temple,
do you think that you would have gotten the exposure or would have had the sensitivity
to go on that kind of research trajectory?
ET: I think it probably might not have happened simply because most of the big schools seem to
be in more rural areas where minority presence wasn't as great as it was in North Philadelphia.
I actually feel that the choice I made to come to Temple was one of the most pivotal
in my life because so much flowed from that. And here it was an opportunity to
draw attention to the fact that you have these large minority populations in major cities
and hardly anyone in the newspaper newsrooms we're representative of those populations.
ET: It just seems so wrong. And especially when you think about
the freedom, the majority of people had to live in the suburbs and places like that and not live
in the cities whereas it was more likely that the minority people actually lived in the cities
that the publications were covering and wasn't always that way, but it was an impression I had.
ET: And one thing led to another, and I continued to do research and publish.
I even got, it got mentioned in Saturday Review of Literature of all places.
And there was such a surprise this boy from Bangor now doing something that seemed significant.
And this is beyond teaching. When I started teaching at Temple,
we all taught 15 credit hours a semester and then when we got
Ken Harvard as dean of our school. He wasn't the first J. Douglas Perry who was chairman of
the journalism department. The person who hired me had to run the school for a while before Ken
could get free to come to Temple. He got our teaching loads reduced with the expectation
that we would publish and publish, I did! I was delighted with the opportunity,
and I think it worked out that I came in as an assistant professor,
and six years later, in my early 30s. I was a full professor, probably the youngest one at Temple.
ET: I didn't stop. I kept doing it, but I began to run into resistance
from colleagues at other universities about why I was doing it.
And there was another… There was another stream of criticism, and it came from minority
people who, when they found out I was white, began to question motives and everything,
and I thought that was really unfortunate and I really couldn't stand that. So, at this point,
while I retained throughout my career a dedication to minority hiring and employment and education,
the studies were taken over by
professional groups, and that seemed to be a better way to go than just one person
doing it and now being criticized for doing it. So, you know, that was a period when I think
I made a difference and caught the attention of others, including some professional associations,
who then went ahead and did similar studies for four ensuing decades.
ET: But I can tell you that there was a concerted effort on the part of Temple
and some other colleges and universities to recruit minority students into our classrooms.
And it was thrilling to have such a mix of students who support each other. Whether you're
a faculty member or a student, it was free and open at Temple. No one ever told me what to teach
or how to teach or showed up in my classroom unexpectedly to just see what I was doing.
ET: I just felt totally free. I don't know that other colleges, universities, carried the freedom
that Temple did. And early on, I thought of Temple as one of the early adopters in terms of
growing its minority student enrollment, I was very proud of that and very proud
of what our students did after graduation. I mean, we were not a prestigious school,
but we gave a fantastic education.
ET: We had a number of people from the local media come and teach classes for us as adjuncts,
which really was fantastic because it frees up the full time faculty
to teach a combination of skills, courses and more academic courses. We
became accredited, I think, in the 1970s and we have been accredited ever since.
We were one of two schools in Pennsylvania to be accredited. The other being Penn State.
ET: Other schools followed, but that's how it went in the 1960s and 1970s.
Our school was such that if you wanted to do something, it was fine,
just go ahead and do it. I thought, I think at last count, more than 35 different courses.
I started half of those courses simply because I wanted to do it
or someone asked me to do it. I did the first electronic information gathering course
at Temple. Did I know a lot about it? No students… Some of the students knew a little bit.
ET: We found a way at the end of that, just about every one of them
went into some area of electronic information gathering. It was a small class. I loved it and
I think it's part of what teachers do is educate themselves not as professionals, but as teachers,
there's a big difference. You have to have a professional background,
but it doesn't have to be your main vocation. You're a teacher,
you want your students to be better than you are. In so many cases that actually happened.
I remember one young person who showed up in my class, African American. His name was
Clarence Williams. Tampa was his third or fourth school. I found out later, much later that he…
Took photo which I was running at the time
because it had the fewest requirements. He sat right up front. He didn't talk at all
for the first two months and then I gave… a set up a program for… Hey,
I'm drawing a blank on the photographer. I am really sorry. Let's stop for a minute.
ET: I gave a lecture on Gordon Parks. And afterwards, with a lot of student participation,
because they pulled things from his writings, his poems, his other prose and had students stand up
during my lecture and read his words anyway. After class, Clarence comes up to me. “Dreadlocks and
oil,” and these are his first words to me. I want to be like him. Well, he graduated in the early
90s and I helped him get some internships, and he began getting internships on his own.
And he wound up at the L.A. Times and would do the jobs no one else would do.
And one of them was going into one of the toughest parts of Los Angeles and photographing addicts
and their children. And there was a series, It was called
Orphans of Addiction, and it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
Clarence wasn't nominated for his photos. It was just the stories, the things the reporter wrote.
Well. The Pulitzer jury saw Clarence’s photos and said his photos are better than anything that's
been there for photos. They gave two Pulitzers for photos, one in the newsroom and one in feature.
So, they pulled out Clarence's photos. He's still very young. He's, I think,
still in his 20s. Maybe he is the youngest to ever win a Pulitzer and he gave me a call
and he said, “Dr. Trayes, did you hear?” I said, “Yes, Clarence, I heard!” And here it was
a Pulitzer Prize! Winner from Temple University, not Harvard, not Syracuse, not Missouri, not some
other school, but Temple in so many ways, he put us on the map. The university president at the
time, Peter Liacoras, of course, was so delighted with it that when I asked for support to hold a
program at Temple, he said, I'm giving you my food service and you can open up the licorice center
conference room and invite as many people as you want. And we'll honor him before he gets honored
at Columbia University. Well. A lot of people came and there was a buffet dinner that I had
no idea how much it cost. But it was a real commitment. I had also invited
local Pulitzer of them up before this, this dinner crowd. And then I introduced Clarence
and had him join them, and they all welcomed him with open arms. And it was such a wonderful
moment. Clarence's parents were there. A number of people from the Philadelphia media were there
and it was just a high point in my career at Temple and validation for what can happen
when you have a university like Temple who, as I said, Temple was Clarence's fourth school and
he was only there because his mother insisted that if she sent him a plane ticket to come in from the
West Coast, he had to agree to enroll in college. And Clarence told me later. He said that it was…
ET: “That's cold, mom. That's really cold.” And he came back to New Jersey, came to Temple, was
admitted, and caught fire in my basic photo class, continued as a photo major and never looked back.
He was one special person, and I am so proud of him. And guess what he is doing at this point?
ET: He's teaching in Mississippi at a university where people in his family and earlier generations
weren't even allowed on the campus. How's that for changing careers and a place where you can
make a real difference and be a model for other people who might like to follow in his footsteps?
KY: Well, and you’ve seen introducing him to Gordon Parks
in your curriculum is what it sounds like he saw himself in Gordon Parks.
And so what you were doing was bringing diversity into your curriculum at that time. Yes?
ET: That's a good point. And I should add that after Clarence got the Pulitzer,
he got a call. He got a call from Gordon Parks who never got a Pulitzer. As far as I know,
which was interesting in itself, but its connections like that and Clarence
isn't the only one. But I felt that Temple just by making the push that we did toward
increased minority enrollment and increased presence of minorities, our faculty, Karen,
I was so pleased when you came over from Radio, Television, Film to join the journalism
department, it was a real shot in the arm. About the same time, or maybe a bit later,
we got Lynn Washington and Anita Odum, and at some point, or so Mr. Pride came for a while who was
with the journalism program at Lincoln University in Missouri,
and then we had alumni come back and one that I remember in particular was John Dotson,
who was the editor of the Toledo Blade. So Temple has and continues to have a presence
in minority participation in journalism and mass communication. I think that that is one of our
most outstanding contributions to the professional field. And I don't see us stopping in that regard
anytime soon because the need persists and we continue to attract students
who fill the bill. It's up to us to prepare them and then the rest is up to them
and where we can be a mentor or an ice breaker, those are the kinds of things that count.
KY: And I wanted to ask you, since we're talking on September 17, 2020, as you continue
to reminisce, you talked about joining Temple in 1967, but it was also in 1967, isn't it that when
the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Editing and Minority Interest Program started and you brought that?
ET: We started it in 1967, but the first program was not offered until 1968. I got a call from
my friend Paul Swenson, executive director of the newspaper fund, who said, I have an idea.
That not everyone in journalism needs to start as a reporter. You can start on the copy desk
and that it will be open. We get some major daily newspapers to see how that would go.
And of course, I said yes. And Jim Gilmore of the University of Illinois, and I did
the first program in 1968. In the summer, we had about 15,or 20 people and they went on to major
dailies throughout the United States. I remember one in one of these individuals, in particular,
Barbara Armstrong, who was about 19 or 20 years old and who sat on the copy desk of
the Boston Globe, which was all male and all men who had been long time reporters.
And there she sat, among them working as a copy editor for that entire summer. She was accepted
and there was positive proof that it could work because at another paper we had Janie Bucker,
who went on to a stellar career with Knight Rider. We had Carl Sessions Stepp who had an
outstanding career with the Charlotte Observer and then went on to the University of Maryland,
where he taught editing and wrote books, and I think is now retired. He retired before I did.
ET: That kind of thing. So, we had a wonderful group of people and most of them
stayed in journalism working in a newspaper. So proud of them.
We had a program; it was called a pilot program. The other pilot program was
the University of Nebraska with Jack Botts and Neal Koppel. So, it started in earnest in 1969
with the first true editing program, even though the first cohort was 1968, and it just kept going.
ET: We did our best to involve minority people and Wanda Lloyd was one of our first in 1968
or 1969, one or the other, at the Providence Journal.
Well, her career in journalism speaks for itself and what she has done. She has given back many
fold more than she got from us, but she got her start with the newspaper fund. Dewayne Wickham,
U.S. News and World Report and a correspondent at the White House, in the Congress and everything
like that came through our program and then went on to an incredible career.
ET: Monica Drake, who's now one of the assistant-managing-editors of The New York Times.
We put her on that paper. They never lost sight of her, kept her on their radar, hired her back,
and now she's on the masthead. You go on and on with that. But it all starts with
vision. And Paul Swenson had that vision. Then he moved on to Temple and A.I.
He was succeeded by Tom Engelman, who was so adept at making sure that what Paul's vision was,
was fulfilled and he grew the newspaper fund. He grew new programs that were Paul's vision, but
in fact, we're we're the product of Tom Engelmann efforts. And then when Tom Engelmann left.
The late 80s, early 90s, Linda Shockley, who was Tom's assistant, became the managing director,
and she was the first person of color to hold that position and the first woman.
ET: And she has done a fantastic job as only she could do because of her personality and her
dedication. She was the experienced journalist, and she used all that she learned, including
her being mentored by Tom and others while she was an assistant at the fund to do the fine job
that she has done. The news fund the Dow Jones News Fund is quite different from what it was
when it started in the late 1950s, and the focus was on newspapers. Now it's in the news business
and some of the people who are most active in it are people that have come through
our program. One name that comes to mind is Gary Howard, who is a director of programming for the
National Business Journal, which has franchises in cities all over the country. He takes 10 interns.
Most of the minority every year, and he was one of our interns at Temple in the early years,
and he has never forgotten it. And every time I see him, he tells me how grateful he is
that he had an opportunity to get that start. He didn't particularly like where I sent him,
but it turned out to be one of those things that worked out really well for the rest of his career.
I put him on the Dow Jones News service, which was a really good craft organization.
ET: And he learned more than he ever bargained for. And here he is later on and much later in his
career, and he's still doing business journalism. But he had an idea about where he wanted to go and
that wasn't in the cards for him. He seemed to be better qualified for the Dow Jones news service,
and I think in the end he finally realizes that that was the right place. I have loved
doing the Dow Jones training programs. I've done between 60 and 70. Some years I did to
run for the Ottawa News Service, which was owned by Dow Jones at the time, and the other for the
major metropolitan dailies that participated in the program. And over the years it was New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, you name it. I would travel every summer for years
up and down the East Coast, visiting each intern on the job, making sure that they were getting
paid to interact with supervisors in all manner of things like this. And I think it's served to
give the program a certain gravitas that no other intern program has.
Unfortunately, we no longer make those visits unless it's really necessary.
ET: But I think that the decades where we did visit newsrooms and meet the people who ran
those newsrooms, as well as the supervisors of our interns, set us apart from all other
programs. And it was, it was truly, truly special. And every year when we select interns,
we look for a variety. It isn't always people who go to the best schools or anything like this.
It isn't always people who go to journalism schools. We look for people who have potential
but have not had the opportunity. And it turns out that some of those
are some of our real success stories in terms of giving them.
ET: Originally, we were three weeks with the news phone and then later… It's now about 10 days.
We're still trying to do a lot of what we do. We pick up the essence of what was done. But. I
mean, we tried to get them ready so that they would hit the ground running at their respective
assignments. And it worked. It was a pull for an idea carried out by Tom Engelmann and later Linda
Shockley. And it has morphed and changed over the years. And I think it's reflective of the business
of news and how it is evolving. We tried to stay current and relevant and ahead of the curve.
ET: And I like to think that we continue to do it. And I'm so grateful that
while the dean that allows me to have my office and everything, he also wants me to continue
with the news fund and I'm delighted to do so. And so far, the news fund seems to be
okay with what we did this past summer or this past May. We were supposed to meet as always,
and it turns out that we couldn't do it. And I had to go to school on Zoom and
tell the students that I have never really worked on Zoom, and I didn't know much about it,
but I was going to try my best to give them the best experience that I could.
And that worked, too, and I got good reviews from everyone who participated. And they were checking
from their homes and overdue assignments. And I had excellent help from Sarah Frost,
who was then my assistant for about 10 years. And Margot Reed, who was another temple graduate,
totally capable and together without even me, except on Zoom. We were able to plan and execute
what I consider to be a highly successful program, and that's just in my words, but in the words
of the participants. So we continue, we find a way if we can't do it in person, we do it virtually.
It's like this is going on with so many colleges and universities today.
KY: And we're going to take a short break and then when we come back.
Now, okay, so let's talk about the co-founding of the Journal of
Mass Common View. Can you talk about what were the major reasons that you felt there was a need for
journalism, you know, just kind of take us back. What were those early days like?
ET: As I said, I was doing a lot of publishing in the late 60s and 70s,
but I went to my first convention at the University of
A.J.Convention at the University of Kansas in 1968 and wound up being nominated secretary of this new
division and CNS Mass Communications Society. I think it was started by Les Mowler and Gene
Goodwin. of the University of Iowa, Jim Goodwin of Penn State, who was the director of the school,
and a few others. So, I was then on the track to become head of the division in about 1970 or 1971.
As the head of the division, I got to know a little bit about how AEJMC
worked and what was possible. And here we were.
ET: One of the newest divisions within the association and had one of
the largest memberships, hundreds, hundreds journalism professors interested, of course
in the United States and the world. And I was also noticing that it was getting tougher and tougher
to get published. The queues were longer and longer because there weren't that many
opportunities in terms of publications. So I began to think about a division publication,
and I talked to my dean and department chair and asked them if they would support within the system
the idea of a trial publication. And we called it Mass Com Review. It didn’t
stick in later years, and it's been changed, but it's still
the oldest and longest continuing published division-based journal
within the association. I'm very proud of that. I turned out the first issue right here on Martha's
Vineyard with a friendly printer, The Roses, who said, “Well, if we can print this in our downtime,
we can give you a really good price.” And I had enough money to cover the first issue.
I sold some ads, things like that. And I had an assistant, Christy Morgan, who was an MJ student,
and she was very helpful. And the school even gave me an office to do it, and we weren't
a full blown publication. But Temple footed the bill, for the expenses and everything else
and allowed me to try to do it. So the first issue came out, I think, in 1973.
I was able to bring copies to the convention and I think Ed Madura was the head of the division
at that time. And he went on from teaching to work at the Philadelphia Inquirer for many years
anyway. He liked it. And before long, we had others follow, I think maybe the history
division was next and maybe some others who were totally refereed publications run by the division,
for the division and anyone else who was interested. And we began to promote subscriptions,
and we had libraries and individuals around the world subscribed to Mass Com Review. And
it was there… was successful and we did it on a shoestring and two dollars a year division dues.
That's what it was, so we had to come up with the rest of the money in other ways. I edited it
for the first 13 years. Every once in a while, we would turn out a special issue. And one of the
best was on law and ethics and mass communication. And that was edited by Keith Sanders, who was
on the faculty at the University of Missouri and was very active as the director of Capital Alpha,
which I think you are the advisor Carrie, right? Ok. So, you know, we went
ET: On and on with this man's kind of review.
And then it went to Diana Tony Hess and Bill Tony Hess at San Jose State. And from there
to a succession of other advisors, I think last I heard it was at the University of Illinois
and they were supporting the operation but I think it's remarkable that without deep pockets,
we were able to sustain a publication that gave voice to so many faculty who otherwise might not
have been published as soon as they were, and where we were able to better focus our attention
on mass communication as a discipline. And it was just exciting, and we had an advisory board
that included some real movers and shakers that I remember in particular,
who I wish was still with us Jim Carey, Max Mccombs and so many others who, you know, had
their own really fine careers, but were able to spend the time helping us reviewing manuscripts,
offering suggestions and other kinds of support over a long period of time.
KY: That's that's great. And the history is so important. Can we segway now into
minorities and communication division? Can you talk about your involvement
with the division and your leadership there?
ET: Well, we had a minority themed communication,
a loose association for a few years. And because of my research work and everything, I kind of
became one of the leaders within that. And I met me… I made an acquaintance friendship with
the the journalism professor at Clark College in Atlanta. His name was Alan Bussell.
ET: It may have been W. Allen Bussell. I don't remember exactly the EU, Ses… it's
one or two L's at the end. Anyway, he unfortunately passed well. He wasvery young. But
before that, he and I were at the Washington Convention working on an article for Quilt and.
We got to talking about minorities, because the subject of the article was something dealing with
recruiting and training of minority individuals. And before you know it, we were saying, well,
we just started division. I mean, it was that simple. And we made some inquiries
about what we had to do. So we went out and did that that day. Maybe the next day, too,
ET: And we got enough names. We had to get 15 and I think we got close to 50, something like those
who were willing to sign up as new members of the Minority and Communication division of AEJ.
And that's how it happened. I mean, Al Allen, Bustle and I went around that convention.
With petitions and collected signatures and two dollars from each person.
And by the end of the convention, the division had been approved and liberal. Barrow, who
has had a career in advertising with J. Walter Thompson, I think in New York
before he came to academia, think of the University of Maryland,
became the first head and he was African-American. I came along soon after
And we continued to grow the division and to partner with other professional groups for
similar interests. So we reached out way beyond AEJ to broaden the footprint of what was to be
an ever increasing initiative to improve and increase the minority participation in journalism,
education and the journalism profession. So we got that early start in the early 70s.
ET: I have files from all those years and all our newsletters and everything else in some of the
14 filing cabinets I have squirreled away in the crime. And if someone wants them some time,
I'd be glad to share them and make them available because
they illustrate a lot of what we were doing in those years. It wasn't a publication per say,
it was a newsletter, but we came out fairly often. All right.
KY: And can you talk about the importance to of not just
scholars of color, professors of color being involved in like the Mac division, but that this
I mean, I'd like to hear because you were like one one of the first leaders and you're not a person
of color, but yet you had your research interests and your work in there and just the importance of
having maybe a bigger tent for everyone. And I think sometimes people assume maybe there's
no place for them if the word minority is in the title. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
ET: Well, that always sort of bothered me, but I should say that before we move on
that most of the people who signed that petition to become a division
were African-American or any other minority there. There were white guys,
mainly guys and not too many women at that time.
ET: But I think that… I think you're going to have to rephrase the question for me.
KY: The importance, I mean, and here in the history, it sounds like,
you know, that there was, there was an awareness, at least on the part of some people who were not
part of the minority community, that this was something that was needed.
And oftentimes, in just talking to people. And it's not just AEJ.,
but I look at some of the committees, some of the student groups, if the word “black”
or word “minority” or “Latino” or something is in the title, people assume that it doesn't mean
me to do it if I'm not part of that group. And right, looks like you kind of ignored that.
ET: Yes. I didn't know any better. At the time, because, you know, there were all these lines,
everything the way I was raised in the town, I was raised. Everybody was friends with everybody else.
Everyone counted. And I think that in my church and my faith, I think it
informed how I approach things. And it's just. And the protests of the late 60s
really influenced me heavily. And the fact that they were a Temple on the Temple's doorstep was
another part of it. And I began to really look closely at it, and I think it just didn't seem
fair or right or make sense. And how could it be continuing without making an effort to redress it?
I think Paul Swanson's influence and his interest in minority journalists were a big part of this
as well, because identified heavily with Paul and Paul on his own. When he was in a position
to hire, journalists I know looked hard, long and hard for minority journalists to join him in
Minneapolis. So I think that was a model that was influenced too. I cannot thank other people enough
simply because I felt that if I did it, it would be okay. And then it was okay for quite a while.
ET: And then it began to grow into something else that I wasn't happy with.
And I didn't want people to think that I did it and turned out so many publications simply
on the backs of a minority group when I was in a minority. So I continued to hold the interest
and the dedication in a lot of other ways, but I let the research go to other people from then on.
ET: I feel that I did the right thing,
and I am very glad that I got the support of my department, my school, my college, my university
in so many ways. And there were people across the country who were like minded, who
did their part as well. This is by no means a one-man effort, and I'm not even all that
comfortable talking about it, but since you asked Karen, I said, okay, all right.
KT: So if you were, you know, looking back on your journalism, your media career and if you
were writing the history of that career, and I know you mentioned a lot of things that you were
very proud of, but is there something that you would say would be your biggest accomplishment?
ET: I think it goes back to someone telling me, maybe hearing it from
more than one person. It's what you give, not what you get that counts. And I always felt that
I never fully grew into my shoes at Temple, even after 50 some years. There are always things to
do and places to go without leaving the office. I was given at the very start of my Temple career.
ET: I like to think that I made a difference in the lives of at least some students.
I like to feel that I was there for each and every student
to help however I could whenever I could. And I never worried too much about
the money side of things in terms of getting a grant for this or that or anything else.
I just felt that if you did it you could find a way. And if you waited until everything was
absolutely right before you did something, and it was a sure thing that was the time to do it.
ET: That was never what I was about. I always wanted to try things and do things
and try to change things that needed changing, not because I said so, but because other people said
so as well. And if you live in a community, it's got to be a community of everyone.
It can't be cut down into these little, little silos or anything else.
ET: We're all, you know, people of this world and we all count just like that little town I grew up
in and I think that that has helped me live my life the best ways I knew how. There are always
people along the way who came into my life and I could never predict. And all I did was somehow say
yes more often than know and be grateful for it. And if I were to say one thing to anyone who has
the time to listen to what we have said here today or an hour and a half plus is open to opportunity.
Don't discount faith. Be grateful to the things that come your way and the people who help
you use it as a model for your relationships with other people. And don't focus on the negative.
Try to be positive in everything you say you do. And well, it doesn't always work out that way.
You know that there are times where things come and it's time to hand them off.
ET: And this is something I've done, but I don't think I will ever lose or give up on my interest
in journalism, and editing, in particular in minority hiring and recruiting.
And I take great satisfaction from the fact that I became a college teacher,
not because I set out to be a college teacher but because I feel teaching picked me,
and I can't close this without mentioning my father-in-law, Clyde Albert Harding. I had him
for every course. He taught it over here. I loved the man. Here I met his daughter
one week after I graduated. Poor planning, I think. But maybe the best planning of all.
ET: Teaching is appalling as much as a profession. And if you love it, stick with it
if you don't find another line of work, for teaching is very hard,
demanding. There's never enough time and you're always looking forward
to the next semester, the next crop of students, the next Clarence Williams, the next Karen Turner.
KY: Thank you. Thank you. Well, on this Thurs. Sept. 17, 2020, I must say
that I learned so much listening to you and I'm so pleased that I was asked to be part of this
project. Do you know, I volunteered when I heard about the 50th anniversary and your
role in it? I said, “Well, I've got to get him involved and I need to be involved.” So, I mean,
this has just been an absolute pleasure for me. And I don't know, George, if you have other things
that you wanted to raise, but I think that ED said it all. I don't think you left anything
unsaid. Ed, if there's anything you want to add, please go ahead and do it. But I
think I mean, I feel that you left it all out there. Drop the mike.

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Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications Trailblazers of Diversity collection

Details

Title

Interview with Dr. Edward Trayes

Identifier

camh-dob-012389

Description

Ed Trayes is a professor emeritus of journalism at Temple University. Trayes joined the faculty in l967 and has taught a wide range of courses, including news editing, photography, media management, communication research, publication graphics and design, and electronic information gathering. He co-founded and has headed the MA and PhD. in communications programs within the School of Media and Communication. He is the first recipient of the Freedom Forum Journalism Teacher of the Year Award. He also has been honored as a Temple University Great Teacher.

Trayes is co-founder and director of the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund Editing and Minority Intern Program (1967 to present). This effort seeks to upgrade the editing talent pool nationwide. Participating newspapers include The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal and Newsday.

Trayes also is the founding editor of Mass Communication Review, an international journal he edited from 1972 to 1986. Trayes has worked with newspapers, broadcast operations, corporations and not-for-profit organizations across the U.S. and in Mexico, Central America and South America. Trayes is also a founding member of the School of Media and Communication faculty.

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