Valuable lessons on ‘whom you know’ and on being in the right place at the right time in NY and DC

I’ve been blogging less than usual the past week or so for three reasons: because of various technology issues, because other parts of the program are keeping me busy, and because I’d rather you spend some of your free blogging moments checking out the class blog (including photos and video) for the program I’m now leading on the East Coast.

The group arrived in Washington, D.C., yesterday, and if you’ve been following their class blog you know they’ve met some interesting people and have learned some things (as have I). And despite the inconveniences of a visit from mice in New York, a broken heater here (in the women’s room in both cases), and some minor transportation issues, the students have had valuable experiences that have gone far beyond walking most of Manhattan, shopping, eating prodigious quantities of pizza and ice cream, passing Barack Obama’s train on the way from New York to Washington, and beating their professor at pool.

Perhaps most significantly, students have learned two of the most important things about how the world works, things that have little to do with the traditional education that universities typically provide.

The first of those lessons is that it really is often true that whom you know matters more than what you know. We’ve met a couple of people with great media jobs who had no formal training for those jobs, but got them largely as a result of personal contacts.

Of course the lucky recipients of those jobs had to prove themselves capable of doing the work, but the fact is that most of the six billion people on the planet–including many, many folks more initially qualified for the positions–had no chance of getting those jobs.

Most of us in our group will go to the Inauguration on Tuesday as part of the mob (which as a people-watcher with a journalistic mind I’m actually looking forward to), but three students managed to wrangle tickets thanks to a mother’s connections with a Congressman. Other connections–mine, those of colleagues, and in at least one case those of a student–also helped us get meetings with several of the great media sources we’re meeting with on this trip.

And of course all of us can cite examples (even if the meritocracy-preaching fortunate such as Supreme Court justice and affirmative action beneficiary Clarence Thomas sometimes ignore them) in which family connections or even seemingly minor incidental contacts have led to jobs.

Frankly, part of the reason I have the job I do is that I met a current department colleague while we coincidentally shared an airport shuttle in New Orleans a year earlier. In addition, I was invited to write both of my books (and several other chapters and articles) as a direct result of contacts made through the American Journalism Historians Association.

The second key lesson students have learned is that being in the right place at the right time can matter a lot. Students took in a church service at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem last Sunday, only to find that the day’s surprise guest preacher was Jesse Jackson.

An incidental contact led to two other students getting to see Conan O’Brien’s program, and because I was in the right place at the right time, I was offered two free tickets to see David Letterman last week–and am still getting grief from students because I turned the tickets down due to a conflict with one of our already scheduled class meetings.

In a terrible media market (something of which the experts we’ve been meeting keep reminding us) amid a collapsing national economy, it might be easy for students to become disheartened. Knowing that they spend most of their time in Spokane, Wash., where the “right people” rarely hang out, and knowing that most of them don’t have the kind of connections that will get them easy access to the jobs they want, has provided further moments of discouragement.

At the same time, rather than becoming depressed, Whitworth University journalism students have actively sought out the people and ways to make themselves more marketable. One is doing an impressive blog about the state of the industry, and used an independent study to create and develop the blog and to discuss key related issues with a number of media professionals.

Our journalism students attend national conventions and take part in programs like this one to further enhance their chances of making the right connections. Our department requires students to complete internships, and at least four of the student journalists on this trip have already worked for newspapers or television stations.

All of the student journalists with me work for the student newspaper (comprising most of the editorial staff) and/or radio station, and a couple are discussing adding a Web “television” station linked to the newspaper site.

Last night I went to bed thinking that four students were  staying up to play cards. Instead, the three who were already bloggers helped the fourth start a blog of her own, and the two with Twitter accounts helped the other two set up accounts.

Other media-related activities not formally part of the class, but which have been undertaken by students on this trip, have included seeking and getting enhanced training at College Publisher (which hosts the Whitworth student newspaper Web site), getting up early to visit “Good Morning America,” and taking in a taping of Sean Hannity’s show, in addition to the O’Brien experience.

Even more impressive, a group of a dozen students have asked me to oversee an independent study related to new media technology during the upcoming semester. A normal independent study involves one or two students working on something not covered by traditional classes, but in this case a dozen students have agreed to show up twice a week to teach each other more of the skills that might enhance their job prospects.

Though the university will provide a computer lab for a couple of hours a week in this case, professors are not paid for overseeing independent study programs of any size. We do it because we love to see and encourage enthusiasm about learning, and because such programs teach us more about things we also care about.

In this case, I’ll sit in with the students and let them teach me some technical skills that I can then share with even more students in the future. The students are amazing in their efforts to enhance their education–but the school and I are getting the better deal.

And so will future employers, should they be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to get to know these students.

Hillary Clinton & John McCain joining ‘Obamanation’–of course

With the presidential election barely over and Barack Obama’s inauguration still a couple of months away, the president-elect and his vanquished rivals apparently are well on their way to patching up their differences. Many of those differences weren’t all that large to begin with, since both Obama and Hillary Clinton are more conservative than many think (and Obama will govern even more conservatively, I think and fear), and the pre-campaign McCain was a bit more liberal than the grumpy old conservative he became on the campaign trail.

Still, Obama and John McCain were never good friends in the Senate, and McCain and Clinton probably remains surprised by their losses. Nonetheless, this coming together to achieve a peaceful transition of power is one of the things about American politics that makes our system so strong. It’s also a political necessity, which is why we so often find ourselves puzzled when former enemies–even terrorist enemies–somehow become friends.

Of course, practical bipartisanship (largely absent during the past eight years, so we’ll see what happens from here) also is what most surprises some of those in other countries most unaccustomed to Democracy, and what makes even some rabid partisans in this country a bit crazy. But the middle has again shown that it matters most, so for now let’s hope that the far left and the far right stew in their juices. And let the racists hang themselves.

Despite the fact that Obama has yet to take office and the economy continues to crash (for which Rush Limbaugh has managed to blame Obama, while he and other nutjobs on the right try to capitalize on the historical ignorance of the populace and blame Obama or Bill Clinton for pretty much everything) you can tell many things are returning to normal.

After all, one of the two most popular stories for today’s Huffington Post is a meaningless piece from the New York Daily News (in the “gossip section,” as if the newspaper is ever much else) about Diane Sawyer (who also sang a duet with noted newsman Stephen Colbert on “Good Morning America”) landing an interview with Eliot Spitzer hooker Ashley Dupre.

Next day update: Despite the added “a bit crazy” link added above, more evidence of the forgiving nature of American national politics comes with today’s news that Joe Lieberman–thanks to the support of Obama–will keep his Senate leadership post.