I’m a stickler – a term made popular by Lynne Truss in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” her paean to the values of grammatical correctness. For some, my adherence to the rules of the proverbial road borders on ridiculous, but for me, it is close to godliness. An out-of-place comma or a possessive when plural is intended (as in “five star’s to watch”) is enough to send me over the edge.
Although I may have been blessed at birth (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with the ability to see a preposition dangling from a mile away, I also credit the dean of my journalism school for my sometimes manic devotion to linguistic accuracy. Reese Cleghorn started as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism department in 1981, my freshman year there. He established strict standards and quickly transformed the school from being barely a footnote to one of the best – if not the best – journalism schools in the country. Cleghorn passed away earlier this week.
Of course, Cleghorn instilled in UM journalism students so much more than a passion for language. He also taught us the fundamentals that should guide every true journalist: integrity, ethics and objectivity. He made sure professors gave us history lessons along with tutorials on how to write a solid lead. To Cleghorn, journalism was a profession on par with the law. A Baltimore Sun article from 2001 quoted him as saying, “Since we are all journalists, I get to preach the gospel, go to the freshmen and tell them we are the only profession mentioned in the Constitution, that we have a unique responsibility and our democratic government depends on it.”
Preach he did, and as one of his faithful disciples, I happily absorbed his philosophy.
I still proudly carry the wisdom of Cleghorn’s journalistic training with me in my work as a public relations professional. While the public relations concentration is no longer part of UM’s journalism school, I recommend anyone interested in a PR career to pursue a degree in journalism there. The skills learned and the insights gained are invaluable in all areas of the communications field.
To this day, I apply the timeless lessons he and his faculty taught on writing well and telling a good story. Cleghorn’s definition of an effective journalist, as described in the May 2000 issue of the monthly American Journalism Review (of which he was president), remains true today:
“No doubt we’ll still be experimenting with how to make news more comprehensible, more memorable, more flexible for multiple uses. But more important will be sharpening up for our main mission, as storytellers. Not as mere information conduits; anybody can do that. But as people who can find the stories, understand them and tell them compellingly.”
The legacy of Reese Cleghorn, stickler extraordinaire, lives on in thousands of students who, like me, are better storytellers for having learned from him.