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Kaimin photo: Tim Goessman
On Monday we went around our beautiful circular wooden classroom table and began critiquing the scene stories that were filed Nov. 7.
Some of the stories have been published in the Kaimin once the writers filed to me first: Dustin Askim’s story on the campus Belegarth scene grew a little in word-count and became a Friday Kaimin cover story on Nov. 9, just when the editors needed it most.
Although I didn’t plan it this way, it worked out nicely that Monday’s critique session in class was the day Alice Thorpe came to visit Journalism 494. Alice is the mother of Anthony Pollner, the Montana alum in whose memory all of this happens. She came from New York for her annual trip to visit the J-school, the students, and hear the Pollner professor’s big lecture. We were delighted to see her.
Let me bring you up to speed and then slow it way down:
I’ve left D.C. behind for the next four months and driven 2,500 miles to beautiful Missoula, Mont., to be the 2012 T. Anthony Pollner Professor at the University of Montana’s excellent School of Journalism. The professorship is the gift of the Pollner family, in memory of their son and brother, who graduated from Montana in 1999 and was — like so many of us — a committed (and talented) journalism junkie. Since 2001, the School of Journalism has invited a professional working journalist/author to come live here each fall and teach a seminar course of his or her own design. The Pollner professor is also on hand to help advise (in a casual way) the staff of the student-run paper, the Kaimin, which publishes four days a week. I’ll also be giving a public lecture on Oct. 22.