{"id":49,"date":"2008-09-20T21:44:31","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T04:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.csun.edu\/CSUNStories\/?p=49"},"modified":"2017-03-30T16:44:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T16:44:51","slug":"dewayne-johnson-founding-journalism-faculty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.csun.edu\/blogs\/csun-stories\/2008\/09\/20\/dewayne-johnson-founding-journalism-faculty\/","title":{"rendered":"DeWayne Johnson, founding Journalism faculty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DeWayne<\/strong><\/a>
DeWayne Johnson with Betsy Stelck (interviewer)<\/figcaption><\/figure>
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download the audio<\/a><\/div>
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I was on the tag-end\u00a0of the\u00a0first wave [of faculty], or the front end of the second wave. \u00a0And it was quite a thing to recognize it when I came on campus.\u00a0 There were a lot of people with fine backgrounds that were already in the nucleus of the faculty that was of San Fernando Valley State College.\u00a0 I was hired by a man by the name of Erling Erlandson. He was the founder of the Journalism department here,\u00a0 and he had come from USC, where he was on the faculty,\u00a0and had been honored at USC as a distinguished professor in journalism.\u00a0 So he came here, and he indeed was a distinguished professor,\u00a0and it was an honor to join Erl in that experience.\u00a0 So there were the two of us who were beginning the journalism program here.\u00a0
\n. . .
\nI was hired by Ralph Prator, and Ralph Prator was a fellow who was easy to know.\u00a0 He was so outgoing. From the beginning, as a faculty member, I respected the administration, but was not in awe of the administration — they don’t know all of the answers.\u00a0 But Ralph was really a wonderful man to know, and he treated me as a friend, and well as a faculty member.\u00a0 But if I had opinions as a friend or as a faculty member, he was a good person to talk to.
\n. . .
\n(addressing Mrs. Stelck<\/em>) You\u00a0went as my guest at the 50th anniversary gathering of journalism alumni.\u00a0 It was on the pier on Santa Monica, in the shadow of the wonderful merry-go-round.\u00a0 One of my former students, Russ Bernard, owns a restaurant right adjacent to that merry-go-round in Santa Monica. So we went there for the 50th anniversary gathering.\u00a0 And — I don’t know how many — it seemed, hundreds of students, but in that noisy restaurant — I \u00a0just stood there by the [bar], but the former students came round to shake my hand, and say how great it was to see me, and to my credit, I remembered them\u00a0 Sometimes I had a little help on their names, but, coming back, 50 years later, here are people and they’re —\u00a0“what are you doing now?” Well, they were newspaper publishers, they were writers, they were\u00a0 any number of exalted positions — public information officers. . . I tell you, just a cross-section of journalists in this country were there.\u00a0 And it was just great, because I would recognize them, and then — “what are you doing?” and boy, I tell you, it was just wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was on the tag-end\u00a0of the\u00a0first wave [of faculty], or the front end of the second wave. \u00a0And it was quite a thing to recognize it when I came on campus.\u00a0 There were a lot of people with fine backgrounds that were already in the nucleus of the faculty that was of San Fernando Valley … <\/p>\n

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