Our fourth Zoom Webinar, “Careers in Print and Radio Media When You Do Not Work for the NYT or Fox News” was held on Wednesday, September 9, at 5:30 PM EDT.   Same time and same format as our previous  programs – people you know and you get to ask questions – but new speakers and new topic.  Steve Brown continued his role as moderator for this session.

 

The Class of ’71 is ramping up for its 50th Reunion, June 9-13, 2021. While COVID-19 impairs live events, ’71 is holding a series of virtual events on Zoom, using the expertise of classmates to share information and camaraderie.  We’ve already had programs on health effects, the economy, and education.  We moved away from Covid-19 for the time being because we all hear enough about it.  Michael Douglass, Russ Pulliam, and Pat Stone hosted a program titled “Careers in Print and Radio Media When You Do Not Work for the NYT or Fox News” providing us with a look into the business of and life in radio, newspaper editing, and specialty publications.  Michael (radio), Russ (regional newspaper reporting)  and Pat (pro sports/entertainment ) called on their different backgrounds  to address a number of issues including what responsibility, if any media owes its listeners/readers; what are differences in working for media conglomerate and working for yourself or small media company; and which radio, TV stations, or print media they watch, listen to or read and why.  Their impressive bios are below.   Special note to gardeners:  you are not going to want to miss Pat Stone, publisher of “Green Prints, a Weeder’s Digest.”

Russ Pulliam worked for the Associated Press, NYC, covering the city’s 1975 bankruptcy as well as a story that became the film, Dog Day Afternoon. He met Ruth in NYC, and they moved to Indianapolis, where Russ wrote editorials and columns for the family newspapers, now owned by Gannett. He has continued to write commentary and work with younger journalists through internship efforts; he has sympathy for parents teaching children at home during the virus as he and Ruth homeschooled their 6 children through high school.

 

Pat Stone somehow persuaded his remarkable urban, black, Vassar grad wife Becky to move with him to the mountains of Western North Carolina, where he fell into an editorial job at the original back-to-the-land magazine, Mother Earth News (do we sense an old hippie streak here?). After a dozen fascinating years there (oh, the stories!), the mag was sold, moved to NYC, and the staff let go. Not wanting to move, Pat started a different (i.e., not how-to) garden magazine, GreenPrints, “The Weeder’s Digest,” a heartwarming quarterly of personal garden stories. 31 years later, he and Becky are still creating it. (Becky is the famous one, doing historical reenactments of Rosa Parks, Harriett Tubman, Maya Angelou, and—a special prize if you know this one—Pauli Murray.)