to the editor
I always look forward to receiving the communigator and the spring issue more so than most. It’s amazing to read of the fellow alums reaching their pinnacles. I’m definitely looking forward to tracking down and e-mailing one person featured, as we were good friends in school.
Though I really liked the cover story [“Show, don’t tell”] by Boaz Dvir [JM 1988], a name I definitely recall from school days, I disagree about “you can’t learn this stuff in school. ”
My Student Government Productions (SGP) experience translated perfectly to concert and film production. I stage a variety of film and TV projects as well as handle logistical coordination. I find myself in unique places at various times: coordinating a concert on top of aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman during fleet week, handling the Rolling Stones backstage“scene, ” which would be the best way to describe it, and stage-managing the presidential debate in Miami. All this deeply anchored to my SGP experience.
Very important: I strongly urge Dean Terry Hynes to add to the current curriculum classes in support of film production. It’s imperative to develop current and future students to an easily achievable higher level.
It’s a natural progression to go from teaching story, structure and technical operations (including camera and editing) for journalistic broadcast to adding lighting, theory and long-form scriptwriting. It’s frustrating to congratulate people for their acceptance into a school in Tallahassee that has quickly achieved a solid program in this paradigm.
This particular area is one with such a huge magnitude of influence in so many dimensions that I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for the J-school to step up to the next level.
— Andrew Nathanson, PR 1989
Miami
I just received my first communigator in the mail. Apparently, I have been hiding successfully from my old journalism school since 1964. But, you found me, somehow. Opening the pages, I saw “Alumni recall ‘unparalleled’ professor.” I was crushed to find out that Prof. Buddy Davis [JM 1948 , MAMC 1952] had passed away.
Looking back over my advertising, public relations, marketing and management careers, there have been only three educators who had such an impact on me as Buddy Davis. In a year and a half, he set high, common sense standards in my soul that guided me over my careers. He opened my mind to think, to challenge the norm and stick to my beliefs but remain adaptable to the truth.
At 19, I was a raw, high-hormone, under-educated redneck and not overly motivated football player who for some strange reason wandered into the Department of Journalism. The school was located in the stadium. It was close to the Athletic Department, and I heard the lower level of journalism courses were easy. To show you how misguided I was, my guidance counselor told me I should be an engineer.
I met Buddy Davis in my first journalism class. The man, after finding out I was a “pampered jock,” moved me to the front, right in front of his podium, and dared me to not pay attention. His infamous red pen destroyed my writing. He made me defend my immature positions. And to think!
I went on to play pro football, publish a magazine, become marketing director of a couple of bank-holding companies and eventually run one as a CEO. In semi- retirement now, my golf handicap is too low. My mind needs the challenge of someone like Buddy Davis.
— Russ Brown, TEL 1964
Sacramento, Calif.
