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Degree and Year: PhD '94 (News-Editorial) Company: World Press Institute Company Web Site: http://worldpressinstitute.org/ Title: Executive Director City and State: St. Paul, Minn. What do you do? I'm where the buck stops, if we had any bucks. Describe your company. Forty-two-years old with 470 alumni in 93 countries, WPI promotes press freedom around the world and focuses on the role and responsibilities of a free press in a democracy. Our core program is to bring 10 journalists a year from around the world to the U.S for four months so they can see how a democracy works and can explore our best journalistic practices. What makes you good at your job? I don't know that I am. I do, however, have a lot of years in the business and I've been to a couple of dozen countries and I had a good education from Mizzou. Also, I married well - much better than she did. How did you get your job? I wore down the selection committee while scaring off my competitors for the job. What are you currently working on? A third book, a left-handed hook and the unauthorized biography of George Kennedy. What have been your greatest professional achievements? The last three projects I supervised as assistant managing editor at the Star Tribune were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in different categories, and one of them won; being IRE's first professional executive director and starting most of its programs; getting my PhD at Mizzou; having my fiction turned down by some of this country's best publications. Where would you most like to work and why? I am here and I'm considering working. I like the winters, the mosquitoes, the absence of mountains and oceans; the long dark; and the fact that you all don't live here with me. What are your next career steps? I plan to be the first Nobel Prize winner as a journalist for the invention of a set of new verbs that can never be used as nouns. What is something about you that may surprise people? You may not know it, but I'm actually a good-looking, older fat guy. Best professional lesson learned at the J-School? Everything is improved by a good editor. What would be your best advice to current students? Get done, get out, get money, get honor, give money to me. What is the one thing you wish you had done? Invented blue jeans. 
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| Revised: 20 April 2007. Copyright © 2008 The Curators of the University of Missouri | Contact the J-School | |
