Last week we had the board members from the Alabama Press Association on campus. Today, it is Gene Policinski, the vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center in Washington D.C.
Things are hoping around here.
Policinski met with student-journalists at the Crimson this morning. I treated him to a mid-morning snack after that and he told me how he got in the business, where he’s been and his upcoming projects. Very interesting — and nice — guy.
The department took him and a few students to lunch at The Rotunda Club, the exclusive dining arrangement on campus. We ate in a beautiful wood-paneled room with monogramed plates and personal attention.
I hope whatever organization that normally dines there was able to make do with vending machines.
We had a student media committee meeting, electing next year’s editors for the literary arts magazine, Sojourn, the yearbook, Entre Nous, and The Samford Crimson.
This evening Policinski was the featured guest at the Timothy Sumner Robinson Forum. This is a Samford program named for a 1965 alumnus. The Robinson family hosts the event each year in honor of Timothy, who was a veteran of The Washington Post and the National Law Journal.
At the Post Robinson had more Watergate front page stories than anyone. He’d go on to work at NYU, and then head west to pioneer much of the first online media work.
Here’s Policinski speaking in Bolding Studio about the constitutionally “unique role” of journalists in the political and legal system:
He notes “We have turned to an era where we talk to people directly.”
He applaud bloggers and citizen journalists, but notes a difference between what they might do and what a committed court reporter could offer as coverage. He’s right, and it isn’t about the journalism, but about the legal system. There’s a need, he says, for more legal training, which is part of a big project he has coming up soon with his many professional affiliations.
The state of legal reporting is in decline, but not because of the people covering it, but by volume. Meanwhile, he says, the journalism profession is “if not walking away from it is turning away because of other pressing issues.”
Great to have him on campus, though it made for a long day (and after that there was still the newspaper). It was worth it. You can follow him on Twitter @genefac.
