Linda Winslow '67 |
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Executive Producer, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer I can honestly say I am where I am today because I graduated from Columbia in 1967. That was Fred Friendly’s first year as a professor at the J-School, and his enthusiasm for the incredible power of television, in the right hands, convinced me to go into the business. My first job was an internship at The Public Broadcasting Laboratory, a project Fred had a big hand in creating. PBL was the beginning of my love affair with public television, where people to this day regard viewers as intelligent, curious human beings, not just “eyeballs”. That attitude is the logical extension of my year at the Journalism School. Every professor there emphasized the power of a journalist’s pencil to inform and educate the public. They also stressed the importance of doing your homework before plunging into a story, or an interview, and mastering your material before you start deciding what your point is. I learned there are no shortcuts to good journalism. I carved out my career in public television, moving from one great project to another before coming to rest at the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in 1983. Now, as the NewsHour’s Executive Producer, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to teach my staff the lessons I learned at Columbia’s J-School. They were lessons that make it easier, in this age of information overload and 24-hour news cycles, to remain true to the ideal of better informing the public about what’s going on in the world. Read more about Linda... |
Photo/Claire Holt
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