Bradlee Addresses Journalism Grads

Dean Nicholas Lemann sent off the Graduate School of Journalism's 2007 graduates with help from Washington Post vice president at large Benjamin Bradlee, urging students to be active as alumni and retain community bonds to bolster the future of their field.

In this ceremony without caps and gowns, master of science, arts, philosophy in communications, and arts in journalism diplomas were awarded, along with one doctor of philosophy in communications diploma given to Liel Leibovitz.

Lemann stressed the importance of using the Internet to foster communication and the exchange of ideas to ensure the future of
journalism online. "The profession itself… will come to the fore because of the Internet."

Alumni should stay in touch with each other and with the school not for sentimental reasons but because it's "a matter of keeping journalism itself strong, vigorous, creative," Lemann said.

Lemann's welcome was followed by a brief address by class president Akisa Omulepu, who called her time at the School of Journalism a "high speed roller coaster ride" in which professors "hold and mold our fragile and delicate dreams in the palms of their hands."

Lemann awarded Bradlee with the Columbia Journalism Award, which Lemann called the equivalent of an honorary degree. "If journalism has a dirty little secret … it's that life actually isn't as interesting
as good journalists make it appear to be," Lemann said, adding that Bradlee made Washington, D.C., seem like "the most fascinating place on the face of the earth."

Bradlee discussed his career in journalism, relaying stories about interacting with presidents at dances, dining with Jack Kennedy, crawling on a ledge to scrawl quotes from a man trying to jump off the
10th floor of a building, trying to sneak behind the lines in Tunisia, and finding out Deep Throat's identity.

Bradlee said that he got his first byline when he was 16-years-old, and that "it was a really-I just reread it-boring feature about a model ship."

Lemann and Bradlee presented different views on the future of journalism.

Lemann said that while he was conscious of the promises of the Internet, "the level of anxiety in journalism is high," because "we're more and more in the business of figuring out the future of journalism."

Bradlee was more optimistic, saying, "If you're expecting me to expound the … threats to our very existence, you're gonna be disappointed." He added that he is "flat-out sick" of hearing threats
to journalism's "dire extinction."

As they received their diplomas from their professors, students shook hands with Bradlee who armed then with the knowledge that "your degree here will do you obviously some good, but what will do you more good is just getting out there and living." He closed with advice from his
father: "Nose down, ass up, and go."