Always an Ink-Stained Wretch

Bill Kennedy talks about his career in journalism and the history of the UAlbany Journalism Program in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review:

"I was not privy to the arrival of the Journalism Program at the University at Albany, and I heard it had a somewhat uncertain birth. The program as Bill Rowley conceived it was pragmatic, professional, idealistic, literary, and peppered with journalists from the real world of news reporting. This opposed another idea that was on the table in the English Department: to present journalism as a textbook course, with excursions into municipal history, the history of journalism and who knows what else? Bill’s idea prevailed, I don’t know why, but he was a persuasive and insistent fellow. He wanted his students to step lively into their journalistic careers after graduation, but also to be educated in history, politics, literature, and, above all, to know how to write when they did so."

More:  http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/william_kennedy_albany_journal.php?page=all