Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Lecturer to address future of journalism in Internet era at U. Montana
By Carmen George
Montana Kaimin, U. Montana
February 27, 2009

Former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger will give a lecture about the future of journalism in the Internet era Monday night at the University of Montana.

“He’s won about every award you can win in journalism,” said Dennis Swibold, a professor in the School of Journalism.

“He’s a powerhouse and an extremely respected editor. We’re eager to have him come here and talk about the future of investigative reporting in an online world.”

The lecture, “Finding the New Jeff Coles: Journalism’s Future in the Internet Era” was set up in memory of Jeff Cole, a former University of Montana graduate and Wall Street Journal aerospace editor and reporter who was killed in a plane crash in 2001.

Steiger will present the free lecture Monday at 8 p.m. in the University Center Theater. He is the editor of ProPublica, an independent nonprofit investigative news organization, and the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit organization that supports the rights of journalists and freedom of the press.

Cole’s widow, UM recruitment manager Maria Cole, said that setting up this lecture was a way to honor the man she loved and what he loved doing by giving back to the University that fed the passion for his life’s work.

“He just feasted the whole time he was here [at UM] and he never forgot it,” Maria Cole said. “His natural curiosity and charismatic personality had him all over and diving into everything. He loved what he did; he truly had a passion for it and was gifted. It was what he was intended to do, no question. I loved it, I loved being around it.”

Carol Van Valkenburg, chair of the UM print journalism program and Kaimin advisor, remembers Cole as “tenacious but engaging” and a “zealous reporter,” a journalist who started at the Missoulian and always kept in touch with the school even when he worked at the Wall Street Journal.

Cole would sometimes hint that he wanted to come home to Montana and maybe teach at UM someday, Maria Cole said. They had just started building a house in Montana together when he died.

He was a man who worked at the Wall Street Journal, but always chose to drive a tiny beat-up Nissan, Maria Cole said. He was a man who danced with her in the grocery store, a man who made a person feel like the most important person in the room when he was talking to him or her, and a man who would write, “I know enough to know that I don’t know at all” in job application paperwork.

“He said to me [that if he ever died before me] he only wanted three things: ‘I want you to go to Montana, I want you to build that house in the Bitterroot and I want you to do something good for those people,’” she said.

Maria Cole pointed up to the sky to Cole after she finished number one and number two. She hopes Monday night will get her pointing up to the sky again with the start of that number three.

Monday’s lecture will be the first of an annual Jeff Cole lecture series, and Maria Cole said she’s excited that Steiger, Cole’s former boss, will be the first speaker.

“He wanted to come home,” Maria said of Cole. “I think I wanted that for him and we made it happen together. I think he would smile [about the lecture]; he’d chuckle. Now he gets to live again so it’s good, it’s all good.”

Her biggest hope is that everyone takes full advantage of Steiger’s visit on Monday.

“Bring on the questions — don’t hold back, don’t be shy. Steiger’s not the kind of person to be shy with,” she said. “Ask absolutely anything and everything, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Have some Jeff in you that day and go for it because he would.”

carmen.george@umontana.edu

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