Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Media

Spring 2012

The Wire: Urban drama, gritty reality, and Soc 496 “textbook”

It’s not exactly a typical day in class, even an upper-level sociology class geared towards the grittiest of urban realities.

The room is filled with the sound of gunfire. A projection screen shows a quartet of inner-city drug thieves pinned down behind a parked car. Each reloads his and her weapon. Their leader, the scarred and unflappable Omar Little, gives them a look and says, “Y’all ready? Let’s bang out.”

The four stand up, fire back in unison, and execute a retreat, with one killed by friendly fire.

Professor Gregory Hooks stops the tape. The room goes quiet.

“And why’d we watch that?” he asks.

» More …

Winter 2009

Old News

Just as several of Washington’s newspapers have vanished from the landscape, librarians and volunteers are bringing our state’s near-forgotten newspapers to light. Through a project in the Washington Secretary of State’s office, library employees and about 15 volunteers are digitizing the Washington State Library’s extensive newspaper collection to make it accessible to teachers, students, and the general public. In addition, WSU’s own Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections division recently assumed responsibility for an aging newspaper collection in the Holland library that contains Pacific Northwest papers dating back to 1851 as well as Colonial America papers dating to 1728.

Both … » More …

Summer 2003

A tale of many cities

As a boy Clint Borgen dreamed of having an interesting life, radically different from the humdrum sleepiness of Anacortes, Washington, his commercial-fishing-oriented hometown. He played spy games with a seemingly fearless older brother and best friend. At 20, Borgen became a firefighter. No small wonder that the next year (1999) he hopped a flight to Macedonia for a month of volunteer service, simply because he had watched television images of Albanian refugees and wanted to see the war zone for himself.

Returning safely to another somnolent community, this time Pullman, Borgen (’03 Comm.) published a book late last year about his four-year, 13-country marathon of … » More …

Fall 2004

Broadcasting as public service: Peter Jennings refreshes the Murrow vision

What would veteran newsman Peter Jennings tell students seeking a career in broadcasting today?

His wife posed the question to him when they were in Pullman for Washington State University’s 30th Edward R. Murrow Symposium April 14. The answer came that evening in Jennings’s presentation, after he accepted the Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting from WSU.

“If you believe that broadcasting is a public service, then please come into the profession,” he told the largely student audience of 2,500 in the Beasley Performing Arts Coliseum theater.

ABC’s World News Tonight anchor had been on assignment in Iraq a week earlier and shared some … » More …

Summer 2004

Harrison National Public Radio pioneer

Whether plinking on the piano or pounding out scripts for public radio on his manual typewriter, Burton D. “Burt” Harrison enjoyed life to the fullest. During 27 years on the Washington State University communications faculty, including 17 as manager of KWSU Radio, he figured significantly in the formation and development of public broadcasting. Moreover, he exerted a positive influence on scores of students pursuing careers in broadcast journalism.

Harrison, 87, died January 22, 2004, in Centralia. Dee, his wife of 63 years, preceded him September 4, 2003.

To help finance his education at Kansas State Teachers College, the Atchison native played honky-tonk piano in nightclubs … » More …