Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Institute for Journalism Excellence
Newsroom experience has kept me up-to-date
By Tendayi Kumbula
Life in the newsroom is a far cry from my professional journalism days
at the Los Angeles Times or The Herald and Sunday Herald of Harare, Zimbabwe.
So I was looking forward to my five-week stint at The Detroit News.
I was to be a technology fellow at the News, where I would learn about
computer-assisted reporting from Assistant City Editor Cheryl Phillips,
pagination from Design Editor Theresa Badovich and the online newspaper
from Assistant Managing Editor Nancy Malitz. I was not disappointed. The
summer was a wonderful learning experience. I have revised my syllabi to
incorporate some of the things I learned so I can share them with my students.
I also made what I hope will be lasting contacts with other ASNE Fellows
and with people from the News, some of whom will be coming to speak to
my students at Ball State University.
But the beginnings were not auspicious. I arrived very late my first
day. Since Phillips was not in that morning and my summer supervisor, Assistant
Managing Editor Susan Burzynski, was gone for the afternoon, I was left
in the hands of two metro reporters.
I was shown around the newsroom, taken to lunch and then shown some
computer-assisted reporting techniques.
There were 16 summer interns. Fortunately, no one mistook me for one
of them. That was partly because the in-house Detroit News Insider had
run an article and picture identifying me as a professor who was coming
to be a "technology student."
The News has a diverse staff. I met many of them and lunched with a
few.
It was an excellent opportunity to learn about design from Badovich
and her colleagues. From Phillips and her people, I was exposed to databases
and search engines, something that continued during my final two weeks
when I was assigned to the online project. I had various opportunities
to attend budget meetings, conducted in a friendly but business-like fashion.
On July 2, I was in the newsroom as tornadoes ripped through the Detroit
area, leaving freeways flooded, more than 10 people dead and $130 million
in damage. It was my first tornado. I saw the newsroom mobilize to cover
this natural disaster.
The front page design kept changing as the magnitude of the disaster
struck home. It struck me personally, as well. Although it normally took
me 15 minutes to get from the newsroom to where I was staying at the University
of Detroit, that evening it took me 90 minutes to navigate flooded and
congested freeways and non-working traffic lights. The next morning it
took 3 hours to get back to the News.
Although the strike against the News and the Free Press is officially
over, much bitterness remains. Several times pickets called me a "scab"
when I was walking out of the News building, which also houses the Detroit
Newspaper Agency.
I was relieved that the newsroom staff was friendly and did not regard
me as some sort of a "pinhead" wont to spout esoteric or surrealistic ideas.
I learned a lot because I was among people who accepted me as a colleague.
Kumbula, a professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., spent
his summer at The Detroit News.
