COM adds hotshot journalists to faculty
Sutherland and Stecklow bring experience, creativity
Two well known journalists joined the College of Communication faculty this fall as adjunct professors. Steve Stecklow, senior special writer and news editor at the Wall Street Journal, will teach Advanced Journalism Research and Amy Sutherland, author of the book Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched: Life and Lessons at the World’s Premier School for Exotic Animal Trainers (Viking, 2006), will teach Column Writing.
Both are “hotshot journalists — a real catch,” says Lou Ureneck, COM journalism department chairman. Stecklow’s package of Wall Street Journal stories, “A Hidden Cost of China’s Growth: Mercury Migration,” which he wrote in 2004 with two other reporters, won the 2005 Society of Publishers in Asia Award for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. He was also a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories he wrote with Alix Freedman on the U.N. oil-for-food program.
Sutherland’s column on “training” her husband, “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage,” was published in the New York Times on June 25 and was the newspaper’s most emailed column for about two weeks.
Amy Sutherland
Sutherland is still getting used to her new fame, which began when her column began careening around cyberspace. “The popularity of that column floored me,” she says. “I’ve gotten e-mails and interview requests from around the globe. And now I’m working on a book based on the column — I have a contract with Random House. That column has, at least for now, changed my life.”
The idea for the column germinated as she was writing Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched. She thought that many of the methods she saw exotic animal trainers use on sea lions, dolphins, and cougars might work on her two dogs, DixieLou and Penny Jane, and on her husband, Scott. She was right. She discovered that a technique called least reinforcing syndrome — ignoring bad behavior and rewarding good behavior — works better than nagging.
“When a dolphin does something wrong,” Sutherland writes in the column, “the trainer doesn’t respond in any way. He stands still for a few beats, careful not to look at the dolphin, and then returns to work.” So when her husband worked himself into a frenzy over lost car keys, she ignored him, and his meltdowns cooled.
Sutherland first met animal trainers when she was writing a freelance story for Disney magazine, an assignment that landed her on the set of the 2000 movie 102 Dalmatians. “I spent every spare second I could hanging out with the animal trainers,” she says. “It struck me as a subject that would be rich with drama. That was an understatement.”
"Amy combines powerful reporting skills with a fresh and engaging voice to produce columns and books of uncommon quality,” says Ureneck.
In her course, Sutherland is “really going to emphasize how important the formation of the idea is,” she says. “This is going to be a class for stretching, and that includes coming up with original ways to look at topics.”
Steve Stecklow
Stecklow and his Wall Street Journal team’s series of stories on worldwide mercury pollution from Chinese coal-burning power plants reported that 30 percent or more of the mercury settling into America’s ecosystems comes from abroad, particularly from China. Unfortunately, the problem is going to get worse. “By 2020,” writes Stecklow in the series, “China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center. The majority of the new plants will burn coal.”
Stecklow says he got the idea for the package of stories “after reading an article in USA Today about the large percentage of American lakes and rivers now contaminated by mercury. It mentioned in passing that it was thought that a significant portion of the mercury came from China, but gave no details.” He and his colleagues rolled up their sleeves and delved into the causes of the pollution and the consequences, which include a player from the National Hockey League hospitalized for mercury contamination after eating tuna and other fish on a nearly daily basis.
“Steve is a world-class investigative reporter who has a reputation for taking on complicated and sometimes dangerous stories that cross national boundaries," says Ureneck.
His course, he says, will provide students with some of the tricks of the trade of investigative reporting, including the use of search engines, databases, and other online research techniques, as well as old-fashioned face-to-face interviews. “Other topics will include story generation and presentation,” he says. “Advanced or investigative reporting isn’t just about gathering facts — the information also must be presented in a compelling way that grabs the reader’s attention. Otherwise, the story will have little impact.” Stecklow notes that the skills students will learn in the class aren’t for just epic investigative projects, but are applicable to nearly any routine journalistic assignment.
“Steve and Amy are exciting additions to the journalism faculty,” says Ureneck. Amy combines powerful reporting skills with a fresh and engaging voice to produce columns and books of uncommon quality.”