Part 1: My long journey to Stanford
A new year and the start of a new quarter in my John S. Knight (JSK) Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University provide good excuses to reflect on my journey here and my experience thus far.
I began my JSK Fellowship with high expectations that formed years ago.
On the advice of Eric Newton (then) at the Knight Foundation, one of the first trips I made when starting the Center for Collaborative Journalism (CCJ) was to Stanford for a visit with Jim Bettinger, then director of the JSK program, and Scott Doorley, creative director of Sanford’s d.school.
I was smitten and decided then and there that’d I’d apply to be a fellow in five years, at the end of the CCJ’s founding Knight Foundation grant.
Later, I hired former JSK Fellow Andrew Haeg and got to know many previous fellows from numerous cohorts via Andrew and CCJ advisory board member and JSK alumna Michelle Holmes. These alumni reinforced my opinion of the program and my determination to try to join.
For as long as I can remember being aware of academia, Stanford has held a singular place in my imagination. When I applied to college my senior year in high school, I applied to two schools: a small, liberal arts college that my parents had attended (though their attendance wasn’t my rationale, just the reason for my awareness of it) and Stanford, where I really wanted to be. I was waitlisted for Stanford.
To my mind, Stanford University best embodied (and embodies) academic rigor combined with creative freedom, innovation and world-changing application of knowledge, with a sheen of Californian egalitarianism and friendliness to boot.
The JSK program was attempting to bring many of these qualities to my field of journalism. Some years ago, the program shifted from a mid-career, leisurely sabbatical format to a project-based initiative focused on journalistic innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership.
I loved everything about the d.school — from its leadership in the field of design thinking to its use of space. By the time I talked to Bettinger, he was able to wax eloquently about the influence of the d.school in helping the JSK program continually improve and reinvent itself rather than rest on its laurels, as such academic programs are wont to do.
The JSK leadership wanted the program and its fellows to rise to the occasion of meeting journalism’s evolving and urgent needs. If journalism needed reinventing, this program at this university in this location should be the premier place to start the process.
Already, at the start of the new CCJ venture, I was looking forward to taking some time to step back from the daily grind and think more deeply and strategically about the future.
At that point, I’d spent 15 years with the privilege and the burden of leading teams. I’d led engineering teams and business clients at IBM and a consulting startup, and then co-founded and led Paste magazine. Now, I was embarking on an ambitious multi-newsroom collaborative that aimed to better educate journalism students and better engage and cover local communities.
All of those experiences were enormously rewarding and all blazed new trails. Nonetheless, the challenges were many. I left with IBM executives to start a company right before the dot-com bubble burst. My partners and I started Paste at one of the worst possible times to start a national print magazine. The growth and continued thriving of those enterprises (in different forms) make me proud, but the headaches were almost daily.
More importantly, I just needed time to step away from the minutiae. I was, as the saying goes, mired in the thick of thin things: managing personnel issues, negotiating printing contracts, picking furniture and carpet colors, calculating budget projections, filing reports, teaching classes. Such basic logistical details tend to grow in number and the amount of time they consume until it’s difficult to think strategically.
Thus, even as I started my new adventure at CCJ, I was already looking forward to the possibility of stepping back to think more broadly and deeply about journalism. And to spending time at the place I’ve practically venerated for decades.
When I started the program last September, JSK staff and visiting alumni raised my expectations, which I hadn’t thought possible. Speaker after speaker — people who by training, and probably nature, are deeply skeptical, not prone to hyperbole and distrustful of anything that smacks of spin— unselfconsciously gushed about the experience we were embarking on. It would be life-changing. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Never again would we have the freedom and resources offered by JSK, Stanford and the Bay Area. It is a gift. Embrace it, treasure it and make the most of it.
All of that has proven true so far, and I’ve tried to drink it all in as best I can. Simply being able to step away from email for days at a time is gift enough. Being surrounded by an amazing cohort of journalists all focused on reconnecting to the core mission of journalism and revitalizing—if not reinventing—the industry is invigorating. Engaging in thoughtful conversation with some of the world’s foremost scholars and business leaders has been incredible.
One of the visiting speakers referred to Stanford as Hogwarts. It is a magical place and certainly removed from the realities of everyday work life.
But, looking back on my first four months at Stanford, the greatest gift of my time here has been something else entirely. It caught me by surprise and, I think and hope, is something that may actually rise to the level of “life-changing.”
And that is what I’ll cover tomorrow.
