The joy of being a graybeard

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:23:28 -0400

Other than when I was a college student, and only during particularly rough final exam periods, have I ever gone without shaving more than three or four days. I never thought my particular arrangement of whiskers — which I would characterize as sporadic — would make for an attractive beard, and living in the desert just meant it would be an itchier and sweatier experience than if I had lived in a place where beards actually have utility, like Fargo or Duluth in the winter.

More recent close looks at my face in the morning reveals a latter-day reason for staying clean-shaven: While my hair is still mostly dark brown, my whiskers are around 50 percent gray. I’d instantly be a candidate for Just for Men if I grew them out now.

While I have resolved to have a daily date with a razor for the rest of my life, I know that there beneath my cheeks lies the evidence of what I’ve become — literally, biologically speaking, and figuratively, professionally speaking — a graybeard.

Some years ago I planned to put on an SPJ program titled, “Graybeards of Journalism,” featuring a panel of veteran newspeople who’ve Seen It All and definitely had Been There and Done That in our profession. It would have been a means to inspire the young in our business, who are beset during their first professional years with low, embarrassing pay and long hours of the toughest work there is in most newsrooms.

It never happened. Time and changes to the business intervened. Today we veterans are in a position to no longer engage in one-way dialogue with our younger colleagues, but a true sharing of knowledge. Our wisdom and experience are being exchanged for their technical know-how, at least among veterans who can swallow their pride and even arrogance long enough to realize that the newest generation of journalists are mostly hard-working and eager to learn, but also have knowledge to provide in trade. If you don’t know an HTML from an RSS or a Digg from a tweet, these are the lexicon of the future, friend, and you’d at least start learning the words. You can’t tell the players in the media of the future without a program.

Nothing drives home this point to me as it does each day I teach at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus. The brand-new, state-of-the-art facility with all the latest technological gadgetry, is the perfect backdrop for realizing all the things you don’t know.

Inside this, as I’ve called it, “journalism starship,” I come face to face with the next generation every day. Since being laid off from my full-time newspaper job in January, being a journalism educator has had more meaning for me. With nearly 25 years in the profession under my belt, it was easy for me behind the protective parapets of my newspaper offices to think I could continue on as I had, not really needing this newfound digital way of thinking.

Sent into the classroom as I was, I found myself getting an education as powerful as the ones my students were paying tuition for. Mine is free — heck, I’m even getting paid a small part-time salary to learn while I teach.

And that is not only do the young people have so much to technologically offer, but their work ethic and desire to do well has reanimated me. You expect upon undertaking teaching to get that satisfied feeling of seeing light bulbs illuminate above heads. What you don’t expect is how caught up you become in the dreams of your students. You see them arrive early and stay late, taking on reporting assignments that are miles above the stories you did in school, and you want them to succeed nearly as badly as they do, and you find yourself advising them with as many tips and as much wisdom as you can.

And you see the future of this profession, which will be bright and exciting and challenging, if these students grow into the pros you know they’ll be. Of course, for those of us like me who are still job searching, it’s the near future that stinks.

And so, years after that panel discussion that never took place, I am now myself a graybeard of journalism. But I’m not disappointed to have learned this. For every time a young person addresses you with an earnest question and the greeting, “Professor Scarp,” you don’t feel quite that graybearded any more. You feel energized. You feel important. You feel necessary. You feel vital. You feel better.

Mark's Blog

The joy of being a graybeard