Guest Speaker

Monday, September 22, we had guest speaker Bob Wigginton come to talk to my Professional Media class. Bob was a journalist and editor who use to work for a popular newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bob just recently got a job here at Lindenwood teaching and is in charge of our school newspaper. He shared his writing experiences in Arkansas to the class. We learned about diversity in the newsroom and just how important and crucial it is. We were told that in the newsroom Bob worked in there were more women than men and only 1 black reporter in the “news section”. Bob said “if you do not diversify in the newsroom you miss out on many things,” and “you want to choose people who are capable of the job, not by color of skin. He said that if you look hard enough you will find the right person for the job. With news, it could very much seem one sided and one would not even notice that mistake. Mrs. Falk told us a story about how a white reporter who was doing an assignment interviewing the public, had not interviewed one black person and hadn’t realized this until her black cameraman mentioned it to her. Bob also talked to us about censorship in the newsroom. His response to censorship was “BS”. I strongly agree with this and think newspapers should be able to report anything and everything. Giving out all the facts and information such as a person’s name and picture would help out the public and let them know about hazardous issues that have happened or even the name of a rapist to look out for. With the incident that happened over last weekend when a guy in a Lindenwood dorm held a knife to another guy’s throat, we have the right to know the suspect’s name because he’s dangerous and a threat. Bob stated how our newspaper wouldn’t allow him to mention any names or else he would lose his job. Another issue Bob discussed was how some newspapers are going downhill and ruining the industry. One example he gave was the “Gazette” which he called “the great Satin” and said is a disgrace.