The Newsroom

My first real role model in this business was a grizzled old chain smoker with white hair, a goatee and a fuse that was ready to pop at any time. Think Don Quixote in a really bad mood.
By the time I got to know Bill Harmon, he'd traded in his press credentials for a teaching gig at Southern Illinois University, though unlike most before and after him, his classroom was a newsroom. As faculty managing editor of our school paper, the Daily Egyptian, Harmon introduced a generation of young reporters and photographers to the real world of journalism - one where the editors cursed, deadlines were law and the paychecks were just enough to get you that used Ford Pinto you'd been eyeing.
I'm pretty sure Harmon liked us, but his was a tough love unlike any I'd ever experienced.
His biting critiques of the paper - posted in red pen for all to see - were often accented with an "Ughh!," a "Double Ughh!!," and, on really special occasions, a "Triple Ughh!!!" He was known to throw the newspaper across his tiny office, though you were never sure if it was because of something he'd read or if one of his always-lit cigarettes had burned to the stub and singed his fingers.
And yet, as much as we feared the man, we knew he was right and weren't about to ignore the lessons in truth, fairness and good, old-fashioned street reporting he was pouring down on us every day.
My colleagues at the time including Mark Edgar, who became a top editor at the Dallas Morning News; Melissa Malkovich, sister of John and herself later a TV news producer; and a host of others who have made journalism their life's work.
Often, I'll stumble across an SIU journalism alum from another generation, and invariably the discussion turns to Bill Harmon. The stories are almost always the same, but it's the principles he instilled in us that provide the real bond.
Harmon was never afraid, for instance, to take on the university hierarchy - in fact, he reveled in it - even at the ever-present risk of losing his job as a non-tenured faculty member. It was, again, about truth and fairness, about the newspaper as a guardian of the public trust, and about the awesome responsibility all of that carries.
He eventually retired and, as proof of how complex we human beings are, ran a florist shop in nearby Herrin, Ill. As strange as that sounds, it made a certain amount of sense, too. Don Quixote was a dreamer, after all.