The Other Two

Growing up, there was me.  But there was me, plus another two.  No matter how hard I tried to forget, tried to erase the fact, there would always be two more.  Two others with short blond bobs trimmed straight across, parted perfectly and pulled away from our round, freckled faces with grosgrain hair bows the size of two clutched fists, or maybe even the size of my teddy bear’s stuffed face.

Each afternoon, at the end of the school day, when Francine Wright, the lower school principal, called our carpool number into the megaphone at the pick-up line with her loud, high-pitched voice, the three of us would grab our monogrammed L.L. Bean backpacks and weave together through the lines of other kids sitting Indian-style, hoping she would call their name next.

We traveled in a group of three.  We were always a group of three.

Well, actually, our parents separated us into two classrooms between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., placing me in the ocean-themed room with mermaids painted on the walls and fish that breathed bubbles of glittered paint, and walking Elizabeth and Maria to the classroom next door.  But at the end of the day, when Flonnie, our babysitter, pulled up to the overhang outside Brookwood School, we would all climb into her baby blue Pontiac, all of three of us pushed together on the upholstered back seat fighting for a flicker of attention, competing to share a story.

As a triplet, you learn that it is easier to compete.  Even at the age of four, you find that there is one thing you cannot avoid.  You cannot avoid the fact that two other kids in your grade share your last name, wear the same jean jumper as you and, well, to most everyone, look exactly the same as you.

So instead of trying to avoid each other, you fight for attention.

And fight we always have.  In terms of competition, though, Maria and Elizabeth have always preferred to fight as a team of two; as kids, they were the dynamic duo.  Forget the Three Musketeers, three was an odd number and they only needed two.  Two to pass the soccer ball back-and-forth.  Two to play hide-and-seek.  Two to steal my Barbie dolls, destroy each doll’s straight-across bangs with scissors and pop off their plastic heads only to flush them down the toilet.

No matter how hard I tried, three would always be an odd number and two was just easier.  For most of my childhood, I lived life as if it were a game of Monkey in the Middle.  And I was stuck in the middle.  Between my two athletic, competitive sisters who were never bothered by a scrape on the knee or a snake in the yard, I stood running back-and-forth, attempting to cling to one of them, or, rather, cling to my identity as one of the three.

But at some point, I gave up on my fantasy for the three of us.  Maybe I gave up when they locked me out of the house for what seemed like the hundredth time, or when Dr. Hancock wrapped my wrist in a hot pink cast after they double bounced me off the bed with just enough force to send me tumbling onto our bedroom carpet.

To their benefit, though, I am not sure they meant to leave me out.  When Maria and Elizabeth locked the front door and left me pounding on the window begging to come inside, they did not know that I was going to tap the glass enough times to push my hand through.  In that moment, I saw the rectangle window, which was about the size of my face, only as the indestructible, clear sheet that separated me from them.  They had no way of knowing that the fragments of glass would leave a scar the shape of a wishbone on my inner wrist.

While I blamed my sisters each time I ran crying for a Band-Aid or a hug, my injuries were not entirely their fault.  I was prissy, uncoordinated and obnoxiously loud.  Actually, looking back, I think they needed to push me into the mounds of red clay behind our house on Patterson Still Road.  I guess they were trying to force me out of my princess games and into reality, or, maybe, they just wanted to rough me up a little bit.

After scrapes, bruises, and enough cherry and grape suckers to make my stomach hurt, I decided that if they were going to play a game, I no longer wanted to be included.  I wanted a game of my own.  Somehow, as tears rolled down my face and dripped onto the scalloped collar of my favorite pink dress, I decided to fight for a new kind of attention.  I knew their life was not for me.  I knew I did not like jumping around in puddles looking for worms after an afternoon downpour, and I most definitely did not enjoy hearing laughs from the other side of the chain-link fence at T-ball games when I failed to hit that small white ball off the stand on my third and final attempt.  Yes, everyone looked at us as the same person, but it did not have to be that way forever.

Today, at the age of 20, I can safely say that we are no longer the competing team of three that we used to be.  We are different.

Maria is serious.  She walks around, her eyes filled with such intensity and concentration that she appears to be projecting a shadow of hatred over the world or, at the very least, a distain for her immediate surroundings.  As her sister, though, I know what thoughts are turning behind her clear eyes.  I know that she is not only driven; she is sensitive, sincere and will always be mom’s favorite.  In this exact moment of time, though, if I took a guess, I would say that she is memorizing the dates of all major battles in the Vietnam War, reciting the names of the generals involved in each invasion and retreat, and obsessing over the detailed sequence of events that led up to the war—all as noted in her tiny handwriting, each character so small that it would make the most detective eye squint.

She may be intense, but I know how Maria works.  As she fills in the bubbles on her exam answer key with the 0.5 mm lead of her favorite mechanical pencil, she only has one thing in mind:  perfection.  While I would advise the unfamiliar to steer clear in a moment of such anxiety and personal pressure, I have learned, after several punches to the gut, what to do.  I tell her to relax and reassure her that she will do fine.  Actually, as a history major on the path to law school, I know she will be more than OK.

Elizabeth is another story.  Well, I guess she prefers to be called “Liz” these days, but she is still Elizabeth to me.  She is one of those people you want to be but cannot quite understand.  A student-athlete at Washington and Lee University, she contains an absurd amount of brainpower and is filled with endless potential yet remains burdened by laziness.  When we were juniors in high school, I remember preparing for a biology exam that was sure to cover more about the human body than I would ever need to know.  Just minutes before the test, as I shuffled flashcards in front of my face and prayed that I would make educated guesses on the multiple choice questions, I found Elizabeth sitting outside Mrs. Sheftall’s lab surrounded by crumbled up pieces of notebook paper.  As she sat on the cold floor, nonobservant of the surrounding mess and students filing through the halls, she flipped through her textbook with a speed that, to my estimate, threatened to rip a page corner with every turn.  Yet, despite my color-coded study guide and sketches drawn with fluorescent markers and labeled with extraordinary detail, she would score higher than me.  Always.

I wish I could explain her photographic memory and decipher the scribbles in the margins of her books, but I simply cannot—and, for some reason, I think that is how she wants it to be.  She likes to be left alone.  She prefers to wander through the wilderness, sleep in a tent below the stars, and identify each animal track, mineral and plant she finds along any isolated trail.  She requires a full night of sleep and, if given the chance, will argue with the intensity of a politician, never backing down from her words because she knows she is right.

Today, the three of us have opposite personality types, a spectrum of friends and all-together different lives.  Yet, no matter how hard we try, we are still the girls in the back seat of Flonnie’s 1981 Pontiac Bonneville snacking on Kit-Kat bars, sipping Sprite from chilled cans wrapped round with aluminum foil to keep the cold inside.  To this day, without hesitation and only if necessary, we have no problem jabbing each other with bony elbows to fight for a moment of attention.

That’s the thing about being a triplet; you share time, stories, experiences and parents.  You share just about everything.  And when you cannot handle sharing anymore, you have to push away gradually, and with care.

Today, we each attempt to distance ourselves by attending different colleges or voting in separate states, but we know it will never work.  Just as it played out when we were kids, the fact still remains.  For each of us, there are still two more out there.  Two more sisters, two different people that somehow, despite my best attempts, combine with me to make a whole.

I would be lying to say that they are not a part of me.  We need each other.  I need Elizabeth to explain the BCS standings to me when I’m trying to impress a boy with my college football knowledge.  I need her to answer my call when I’m bored walking to class, and she needs to remind me that life is not always structured and perfect.  After all, Elizabeth lives in a messy room that—despite her best efforts—will never be clean and drags soil into her bedroom’s cream carpet most afternoons after geology lab.  She does not think to take her hiking boots off at the door.  I need Maria to take me on lunch dates, and I need my sisters to ensure me that Alabama is going to win even if it takes a touchdown with 51 seconds left in the game.

Yes, I know there is something special about a relationship between siblings.  I absolutely know this is true, but there is also something between triplets that, at times, seems to be an almost gravitational pull.   A relationship between triplets is a magnetic relationship that takes shared moments—our first Barbie Jeep, Christmas mornings spent unwrapping identical gifts, birthdays spent blowing out candles on a single cake—and years filled with competition over grades, boys and our parents’ endorsement to develop.  It is a relationship that seems to grow as we age together, fight with each other and face life’s memories, tragedies and friendships as they come.

While I am only 20 years into this developing relationship, I feel certain that one day, when I move to Manhattan hoping to establish myself as a writer at a publishing house or magazine across the street from Bryant Park, there will still be a string tied between my sisters and me.  You see, that’s the thing about growing up with two the same as you (well, to a certain degree), you cannot avoid each other even when it is the only thing you want to do.  You can only depend on the thread and acknowledge that it is there.  And, at some point, I guess you come to see it as a lifeline.  It is there to pull on in a moment of need, but, thankfully, there’s also room to loosen the line when necessary.

Luckerson inspires staff in tornado’s chaotic aftermath

Published in Mosaic magazine, April 2012

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.–Three chairs surround Victor Luckerson’s wooden desk.  Instead of a suit jacket, a heavy crimson fleece hangs open over the first chair.  Instead of a briefcase, an unzipped black backpack is tossed in the chair adjacent. And the third chair askew in the corner makes it hard to maneuver around the pale yellow workspace.

As editor of The Crimson White, Luckerson has a private office overlooking University Boulevard on the University of Alabama campus.  However, posters scattered over the walls hint that the space doesn’t exactly belong to an older career professional.  From the Alabama Crimson Tide posters to a marked-up dry erase board expanding across the entirety of a wall, Luckerson’s office and his life are caught in balance between the workload of a newspaper editor and life as a college student.

In his first year as CW editor, an EF-4 tornado devastated Tuscaloosa on April 27 and forced Luckerson to face challenges that come with covering disaster on a scale few other college journalists have seen.  He emerged from a basement into a far-from-ordinary news environment, yet was immediately at work.

“We had Thursday’s paper to print,” Luckerson says.

However, Luckerson soon realized that this was more than a print newspaper story.  In the days following the tornado, he turned to online print and social media to lead the CW team in producing more than 100 articles and 30 multimedia features; three stories were up that Wednesday night.   With logistical issues, gas shortages, no office space due to the loss of power, and about half a million hits on the newspaper website in the week after the storm (20,000 a week was normal), Luckerson and the CW team were forced into a difficult test.

“In general, the tornado benefited our staff because we all just kind of realized how capable we were,” Luckerson says.

Mark Mayfield, staff adviser to the CW, agrees that Luckerson and the CW staff benefited in a positive way.  He also believes that while Luckerson has always been a good journalist, the tornado really allowed his talents to shine.

“Very few college newspaper staffs could have done that, in part due to Victor,” Mayfield says. “This is one of the biggest stories he will ever cover, and he is a student, and he realized that.”

Jonathan Reed, managing editor of the CW, stayed in Tuscaloosa alongside Luckerson in the days following the tornado and witnessed his leadership in action.

“There was a hierarchy here before the tornado,” Reed says.  “Victor took over afterwards, and the rest of us were just his reporters.”

With such an abrupt change in the paper power structure, only a respected leader could manage a team of 30 students in a time of such crisis.  As a junior in charge of a staff of all grade levels, Luckerson didn’t struggle in holding the respect of his entire staff (even the seniors).

“He inspires them.  He’s quiet, not a screamer,” Mayfield says.  “You listen closely to hear what he is saying.”

Reed agrees that there is something about Luckerson that makes you enthralled as to what soft words are coming out of his mouth; you know you want to be behind him in whatever he is saying.

“He is great at coming up with big ideas and getting other people to work towards those ideas,” Reed says.  “His strength is that he can take one idea and get it done.”

Additionally, Luckerson believes that the tornado taught him lessons that will be useful in the journalism world.  His one-month dedication to the tornado coverage forced him to become a better decision maker and put trust in his staff; he also realized the importance of having a plan.

“The tornado taught me the importance of being prepared for such a crazy situation, anything can happen at any moment,” Luckerson says.

As a senior journalism major, Luckerson plans to take his lessons learned and leave the spontaneity of a student newspaper behind in favor of a more routine job in magazines after graduation.  With two years as editor of the CW, an internship at Sports Illustrated this past summer, and the tornado coverage under his belt, Luckerson will enter NYC with an already great amount of experience he could not have planned for.

“He has great news judgment and not all editors do, he sees what’s important and gives it what he has got,” Mayfield says.

Tuscaloosa’s historic neighborhoods one year after the storm

TUSCALOOSA–A year ago, the curvy streets and cul-de-sacs of the historic Hillcrest subdivision were filled with giant oaks aging over 100 years. Underneath a canopy of tree branches stood a connected community of 28 family homes.  The residents knew each other by name, and neighborhood parties were common amongst the tree-lined streets. 

Today, the oaks are absent in the neighborhood community. 

As the neighborhood nears the one-year anniversary of the April 27 F-4 tornado that swept away their beloved oaks and more than one-third of the neighborhood homes, the people of Hillcrest, along with the neighboring Glendale Gardens and Downs historic districts, remain very much in recovery mode with vacant lots and homes in various stages of reconstruction. 

 Anne Gibbons, a Hillcrest resident since 1997, notes that you can now get sunburned in her neighborhood. 

“We now live in a prairie,” Gibbons said.  “The 100-year-old trees are just flat out gone.” 

While the center of the storm hit the southern end of Glendale Gardens pushing the trees in an east-west direction, the residents on the north end were partly spared as the trees fell parallel to their historic homes. James Mize’s home didn’t take a direct hit from the falling trees; yet, he reiterates the fact that almost all of the trees were taken down in the storm.  

“We went from fully shaded streets to pure nakedness,” Mize said. 

Despite the circumstances, Gibbons says the people of Hillcrest are trying to find the positive in the situation. 

“As my neighbor says, ‘we can now see gorgeous sunsets,’” Gibbons said.  “My husband also jokes that we need to start growing sun-loving plants and tomatoes.” 

Stacey Browning, historic planner for the city of Tuscaloosa, estimates around 150 historic homes in Tuscaloosa were affected by the April 27 disaster; 10 out of 64 homes were demolished in the Downs, 10 out of 36 in Glendale Gardens, and 10 out of 28 in Hillcrest with homes also damaged in the Buena Vista area. 

With the historic properties affected in unprecedented numbers, many renovation requests have come before the Historic Preservation Commission from the Downs, Glendale Gardens and Hillcrest districts over the past year.  Approved to the HPC just a week before the tornado, Gibbons says her time on the commission has been incredibly difficult as she is dealing with her neighbors’ demolition and reconstruction requests.

 “You have the tendency to want to say, ‘Sure, do whatever you want,’ but we can’t do that in order to retain the historical neighborhood,” Gibbons said.  “You can’t call them historic districts if you don’t maintain the character.” 

Due to the increase of requests after the tornado, the commission decided immediately to meet twice a month rather than just once.  Mize, chairman of the HPC, says they handed over some of the commission’s power to Browning and the staff; the staff was given the ability to approve siding if it was already present on the home and allow fence construction if the plans met the guidelines and materials. 

 “It was a completely different ballgame after the tornado,” Browning said. 

As the HPC’s mission is to “provide primary guidance in the planning and design of projects that are sympathetic to the special character of historic districts,” the commission has worked since April to maintain what history the tornado did leave behind in the historic neighborhoods.

Gibbons says that while many tornado victims were frustrated at times with the request process, she believes most came to understand the value of the HPC in the end. 

“It was beneficial for people to realize their neighborhoods are protected by historic districts,” Gibbons said.  “As one resident said, ‘this is what protects us.’” 

Almost a year later, Mize says the request numbers are down and things seem to be somewhat back together. 

While Mize wasn’t forced to move out of his home, his replacement windows were installed last week and his siding is going up.  In Glendale Gardens, he says one house is almost completed, the foundation is set next door, a few lots are for sale and other cases are set to appear before the commission. With the fences, trees and landscaping reworked, he believes the lots (with their proximity to the center of town) will soon be desirable.

In Hillcrest, four homes are now being rebuilt, three lots are for sale, and Gibbons expects most neighbors to be back.  While she does think the others will also return, Gibbons says she would not be returning if not for the neighbors. 

“In terms of the houses and trees, it’s not the same neighborhood,” Gibbons said.  “It’s the people.” 

She and her husband plan to move into their renovated home next week; they are also planning a 4/27 party with all the neighbors (even those who have not yet returned are invited).   

“We just hope to reestablish the sense of neighborhood,” Gibbons said. “We hope we can reestablish the sense of community we had.” 

She says it’s looking like that’s going to happen. 

“A year was always my husband’s goal,” Gibbons said.  “We are coming back—that was sort of the rallying call.” 

Mize would agree. 

“It’s been a year, and we are making it back,” he said. 

 

Kappa Delta Shamrock Run benefits local and national non profits

Kappa Delta Shamrock Run benefits local and national non profits

As vice president of public relations for my sorority, I was able to highlight our largest annual philanthropy event for the The Crimson White.

Local authors share Tuscaloosa’a history through pictures

Local authors share Tuscaloosa’a history through pictures

News story for The Crimson White.

Confessions of a Pinterest-aholic

Confessions of a Pinterest-aholic

Lifestyle column published in the March 6, 2012 print edition of The Crimson White.

Michael Cannova UA AD Day

TUSCALOOSA–For Michael Cannova, a single phone call transformed his career in the advertising industry and eventually reshaped the entire mobile landscape.

Cannova, an advertising director, told students at the University of Alabama on Oct. 13 that he felt like a character in a detective novel when he received this phone call.  He answered and an unknown caller ordered him to be downstairs in 10 minutes.

“A black car will pull up and give you something,” the caller said.

He raced downstairs from his Manhattan office and stood as told on the street corner with his work partner, Tiffany.  The black car pulled up to the curb and his boss stepped out holding a manila envelope that read “top secret” in red font across its entirety.

“Do you accept this mission?” his boss asked.

Cannova chuckled and told his audience, “Of course I did, I wanted to tell him he had me at black car.”

As an associate creative and art director at mcgarrybowen, this secret mission won Cannova and his agency the Verizon Android business and allowed him to create the brand DROID from the ground up.

Cannova, a UA graduate, returned to campus to present “Yes It’s Like ‘Mad Men,’ But Even Cooler: The Good, the Bad and the Process” in the same Reese Phifer lecture hall where he sat on the third row just four years ago.

Cannova began his lecture with the text, “The big question: ‘what do I do?’ usually followed by… ‘Oh cool, like on Mad Men?’” written across the projection screen.

Cannova said that while he does much more than make ads (like on the TV show), he normally does not go into detail in this reoccurring situation.  However, he did admit that the television show does get some things right:  the client relations, the people and the daily work environment.

He stressed the importance of making clients happy and even admitted that he prays his client is in a good mood before each presentation.  Cannova laughed when he described what he likes to call “agency life” as a circus, playground, and organized chaos.  He also agreed with the show in that people in the business are from all walks of life.

“It’s like you are going to high school every day again,” he said.  “Advertising is built on a mound of egos.”

As if to underscore the point, he began to talk about himself.

“I am going to talk about myself cause I’m shameless like that,” he said.

He began a brief history of the cell phone industry, specifically the brand loyalty of Apple and the struggling Motorola, at the time of his secret mission.  Basically, he had seven days to reinvent the entire Motorola Company.  He knew that he had something much bigger than the product at the time named the Motorola Tao and came up with a plan.

“Let’s attack the iPhone, call his girlfriend fat in front of everyone, and really shake things up,” he said.

Cannova said he doesn’t follow rules well.  He wrote the first DROID advertisement, “Everything iDon’t,” in the back of a cab on the way to his pitch meeting.  The commercial launched in October 2009.

“It didn’t tell you anything about what we are selling, but it did tell you that we were f****** awesome,” he said.

As he spoke to a room packed with advertising hopefuls, Cannova described his career in a way that made everyone in the room see that he is in love with his job and possesses an immense passion for creativity. Mike Little, a UA advertising professor, saw in Cannova this drive as he does with many of his students.

“Oh yeah, Oh yeah, I saw his enthusiasm and creativity,” Little said.

Cannova made his belief in advertisement clear and told students that when it works, it can be amazing.

“It can build a brand out of thin air. Revive a dying brand,” he said.  “Break other brands.  It can reshape an entire industry.”

Android is now the NO. 1 iOS product and makes up 40 percent of the smart phone industry.  Cannova captured an emotion, succeeded in selling a feeling of power and entirely changed the mobile landscape in the process.

“Emotion is so powerful,” Cannova said.  “Everyone in this room would love a handful of power.”

UA Faculty Profile: Dr. Jacqueline Morgan

TUSCALOOSA—Dr. Jacqueline Morgan stares into the fluorescent light of the Rose Tower kitchen on the University of Alabama campus.  She must keep the light on due to an invasion of roaches.  She also spritzes perfume on her neck in an attempt to fall asleep in the unfamiliar environment.

For the past two years, Morgan has immersed herself in the poverty of the Black Belt region of Alabama.  She is drawn to mission work and works alongside the University Fellows, a community of University of Alabama Honors students, to improve Perry County for three weeks each spring.

However, this year a cause close to home in Tuscaloosa forced Morgan to call Rose Towers home for the majority of June.

Morgan wipes away tears from the corners of her eyes as she speaks of the April 27, 2011 tornado that swept through Tuscaloosa.   With 10 days until the Fellows’ departure for the Black Belt, both the students and Morgan decided to set aside the programs and service projects planned for Perry County and stay on the UA campus.

“I had to learn to be flexible without a calendar–it was the right thing to do,” Morgan says.

With a year of planning out the window, Chip Cooper, a UA photography instructor, worked with Morgan to ensure the students would have the same experience in Tuscaloosa.

“We were able to make the transition because at the core of Jacqueline was the belief that we would succeed,” says Cooper.  “She teaches students that if you put yourself out there with service, love, and compassion you will succeed.”

As the associate dean of the UA Honors College and director of the University Fellows Program and University Honors Program, Morgan spreads her talent and love for learning across UA.   Just last week, Morgan flew to Denver, Colo. with Dr. Robert Witt, president of the University; met with the creator of the Golf Channel about teaching a course at UA; and discussed plans for travel abroad programs in an attempt to push honors students out of their nests.

While her average day consists of back-to-back meetings, Morgan loves watching students transform and develop.

“I could stay here ‘til I’m 80—I just love it,” Morgan says.

She describes her job as a partnership with students.  She works to promote students, recruit the most gifted students, and strengthen the honors curriculum through unique courses and different teacher perspectives.  She believes that it is her responsibility to help students discover themselves.

In future years, Morgan hopes to put her doctorate degree in philosophy and a masters in counseling from UA to use in the classroom.  She wants to get back to writing and teaching college students about healthy relationships, further demonstrating her true passion in developing students in areas other than academics.

Morgan thinks it is the evolution of finding our selves with a purpose that she finds exciting.

“I just want people to know how blessed I feel to be doing something I absolutely love in working with students,” Morgan says.  “Out of college, I would have never guessed I would be doing this.”

However, Ann Larson, Morgan’s high school English teacher, pictures the kind girl with a soft voice in her classroom and is not surprised.

“I remember her eyes–even though they were brown eyes, so warm, in a sense so clear—you could see her goodness,” Larson says.  “Her parents gave her a really profound spirituality that just came through in how she lived.”

Through working with Morgan, Cooper agrees that her ability to lead by example is her greatest asset.

“Leadership is a service to others and she epitomizes that in her everyday actions,” Cooper says.

A Career in the “Truth Business”

William Bradford “Bill” Huie described his profession with his words, “I’m in the truth business.”  Huie was an American journalist, editor, publisher, television interviewer, lecturer, screenwriter, and novelist of the twentieth century.   On my visit to the WBH 100 exhibit, I learned that Huie’s career as a journalist spanned over five decades in which he always searched to discover and uncover the truth.

As I peered into the first glass case in the one-room exhibit, a quote caught my attention.  The quote by Wayne Greenhaw read, “ Bill Huie was a tough reporter who loved the truth.  More than anything else in the world, he hated hypocrisy, lying, and two-faced and ego-centered untruth.”  This first statement about Huie affected my entire outlook on the exhibit; I now held respect for Huie and found myself wanting to learn more.

I discovered the elements that established William Bradford Huie as a distinct journalist three cases into the WBH 100 exhibit.   I found that Huie overcame fears to capture true stories that would often anger authorities when exposed. Huie’s investigative journalism is best demonstrated through his works The Execution of Private Slovik and The Strange Case of Ruby McCollum. Additionally, Huie’s investigation of the murder of Emmett Till for Look Magazine is arguably one of the most well-known and influential journalistic pieces ever written.   Huie succeeded as an investigative journalist because he was always able to find a great story and bring forth the truth.

I left the WBH 100 exhibit with a sense of pride that William Bradford Huie graduated from the University of Alabama.  Huie’s works of wartime experience, investigative journalism, news television, and his brave involvement in the Civil Rights Movement solidified Huie as an ethical journalist.  Like Huie, I hope to always practice journalism with such a high standard of character and always provide my audience with the truth.

Design & Visual Journalism

On Nov. 12, Dan Meissner and Wilson Lowrey primarily discussed visual journalism and design at the final Journalism Faculty Panel.  In addition, they defined today’s evolving journalism world, evaluated the elements of a great story, and described what makes a piece of journalism “meaningful.”

Lowrey began the panel with a brief reflection on his career as a newspaper cartoonist. He was humored by the fact that he began his career using the now outdated Adobe Illustrator 1.0.  Professor Meissner then described his basic photojournalism class and stated, “Today, most journalists have to do more than write.”  This statement, along with Lowrey’s joke about Adobe Illustrator, made me question my future in the journalism world.

Thankfully, I was soon comforted by Meissner’s statement, “ Journalism is all about telling a story.”    Meissner explained that a great piece of journalism contains all high quality elements; an impressive work must consist of “a meaningful, relevant story that is both accurate and engaging” and “meaningful visual evidence” to go alongside the story.  This explanation confirmed that I do not have to be artistically talented in order to succeed as a journalist; Instead, I must visualize the picture I want to create.

Through a cake analogy, Lowrey described that raw material yields a great outcome. As a journalist, he emphasized the art of listening and stressed the importance of both understanding your publication and your audience. Dr. Lowrey advised that we as students of journalism “have a full toolbox; not just one great skill, but a wide range of skills.”

Dr. Lowrey and Professor Meissner further built upon my understanding of the contributing elements that create a successful journalistic work.  I realized that while I may not excel at a specific element of the arts, I do have creative abilities to offer in my “toolbox.” This introduction into the visual side of journalism allowed me to approach my journalistic career in a new manner; I am now going to focus on storytelling and the written word while always striving to incorporate creative elements into my work.