Mike Cowling Speech-My Article

In a speech on Wednesday, an associate professor in journalism at UW-Oshkosh described how he thought the leading light within the newspaper industry, The New York Times, has been dimming as a result of the Jayson Blair scandal but have been making efforts to regain their lost step Wednesday.

“Everyone contributes to make a single story better,” said Professor Mike Cowling. “No matter who you are in ranking from either highest to lowest, you have a certain responsibility to make that story better in anyway, no matter who’s name gets put on it.”

Cowling spoke on how the last years Joseph Pulitzer Prize for Journalism News Writing winner The Times, has seemed to have lost a step in the newspaper industry. Cowling talked about how the Times uses committees now to get a lot of things done around the newsroom now and how more and more open-minded the management staff has become about new ideas on how to make the overall look of the paper better.

As Cowling stated, the Times has a much higher standard of writing and presentation of it in print than most other publications. The Times, having its own style writing book, corrected a story from 50 years ago and then ran it in their new edition to show their readers how committed they are to excellence.

The nature of news coverage recently has changed since the Sept. 11 incident and the Jayson Blair scandal. The Times has been somewhat distracted with all the recent changes in management and Sept. 11 issues that some of their key qualities have taken a back seat momentarily.

Cowling, who met his wife Melanie while attending Eastern Illinois University for undergraduate school, has been devoting much of his hours during the summer to being as in journalistic terminology, a “rim rat” on either the National or Foreign desk at the Times. Copyediting had been something that Cowling had studied for quite some time during graduate school at the University of Illinois.

Cowling has made a home for himself at UW-Oshkosh in the last ten years, as he is now the executive secretary of the Northeastern Wisconsin Scholastic Press Association in which helps high school journalism students become better journalists.