Symposium Schedule
A Public Humanities Symposium
September 30-October 3, 2010, Bismarck, North Dakota
Directed and Moderated by Clay Jenkinson,
Director, The Dakota Institute
&
Brenna Daugherty, Executive Director,
North Dakota Humanities Council
Thursday, september 30
11:00 a.m. Registration - Sidney J. Lee Auditorium, Bismarck State College
A limited number of extra lunches can be ordered. If you have not registered, or want to purchase a lunch ticket if you have already registered, please stop by the registration table. They will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis.
12:30 p.m. Welcome
Larry Skogen, President, Bismarck State College
Clay Jenkinson, Director of The Dakota Institute
Brenna Daugherty, Executive Director,
1 p.m. C. Ray Penn - “The Philosopher for the Common Citizen”
Eric Sevareid can take his place as a twentieth century practical philosopher in the same league as Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Epictetus. He often used the term “we” in his broadcast because he saw himself as speaking for the common person whose values and common sense could guide everyone (especially their political leaders) through tough times. He sought to describe the essential nature of democracy and the mission of America in the world. In doing so he made political philosophy accessible to his audience of voters.
2 p.m. John Maxwell Hamilton -
“Eric Sevareid and the Golden Age of Correspondence Memoirs”
Waves of hopeful young journalist walked the streets of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Would-be foreign correspondents "rolled up in waves," as an editor at the Paris Herald put it, in that city and throughout Europe. Some of the most important names of twentieth-century journalism-- Eric Sevareid, William Shirer, and Dorothy Thompson, to name just a few-wandered in, as cubs, and left as lions. As correspondents who stood witness to events rushing the world to war, the memoirs they published after WWII dove below the surface of the news to seek its meaning. And although their books are largely forgotten, they are still a potential beacon for journalists seeking to recover the purpose and credibility they see slipping from their hands today.
In the course of his career, Hamilton has had assignments in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In addition to covering foreign news, Hamilton has written extensively on foreign newsgathering and sought to improve it. In the 1980s, the National Journal said Hamilton has shaped public opinion about the complexity of U.S.-Third World relations “more than any other single journalist.” Hamilton’s most recent book is Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Newsgathering Abroad
3:15 p.m. Tom Isern - "Little Folded Paws: Sevareid as Memoirist"
Authors who have, as Bill Stafford says, come away from the plains seem compelled to explain, endlessly, where they come from and why they are the way they are. Eric Sevareid, in his autobiographical writings, is in the mainstream of this river of what may be called colonialist memoir. Velva, North Dakota, a great place to be from, remains timelessly pickled in the writings of its famous native son. Authors, as memoirists, stray from historical reality. In light of these tendencies, is there much to learn from the memoirs of a personage such as Sevareid? Yes, because despite authorial intentions, memoirs tell truths to readers who listen.
4 p.m. Marvin Kalb - “A Conversation about Life at CBS with Eric Sevaried”
Kalb, speaking from Washington, D.C., will speak about his long association with Eric Sevareid, the role he played in helping Sevareid process some of his evening news commentaries, and the unique position Sevareid held as one of the handful of "cultural filters" in American life from 1963-77. He will attempt to "place" Sevareid in the history of broadcast journalism and to reflect on what we have lost in not having such voices in our public discourse today.
5:00 -5:15 p.m. Synthesis - Clay Jenkinson
Thursday evening
Keynote Address:
7:00 p.m. Belle Mehus Auditorium: Bob Scheiffer, featuring Bob Edwards
“The Legacy of Eric Sevareid”
When longtime CBS News television journalist Bob Schieffer joined the network’s Washington bureau in 1969, he joined the ranks of legends and legends-to-be, including Eric Sevareid, Dan Rather and Roger Mudd. "I'll never forget the day I walked in there. It was like a little leaguer suddenly being called to pinch-hit for Mickey Mantle in Yankee Stadium." Forty years later, Schieffer is a legend in his own right and now occupies Eric Sevareid’s old office at CBS. "He was really my hero," says Schieffer. "He was the one I kind of most wanted to be like… I still think of it as his office - I don't think of it as my office. I feel very honored to be able to sit in the same room where he sat." In his keynote address, Schieffer will share his memories of Sevareid and the lessons he learned from the legendary Murrow Boy.
After his presentation, Bob Edwards will join Mr. Schieffer on stage and conduct a live interview on the current state of broadcast journalism and the future of the profession. Book signing following the program.
Schieffer has covered Washington for CBS News for more than 30 years and is one of the few broadcast or print journalists to have covered all four major beats in the nation's capital - the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and Capitol Hill. He has been Chief Washington correspondent since 1982 and congressional correspondent since 1989 and has covered every presidential campaign and been a floor reporter at all of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions since 1972. He began anchoring "Face The Nation" in May 1991.
Schieffer is a member of the Broadcasting/Cable Hall of Fame and is the recipient of the 2003 Paul White Award, presented by the Radio-Television News Directors Association. The award recognizes an individual’s lifetime contribution to electronic journalism.
He has won many other broadcast journalism awards, including seven Emmy Awards. In 2002, he was chosen as Broadcaster of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Schieffer was also the 2004 recipient of the International Radio and Television Society Foundation Award and the American News Women’s Club Helen Thomas Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 2005, his alma mater, Texas Christian University, created the Schieffer School of Journalism in his honor. In 2008, Schieffer won the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment award from the Radio Television News Directors Association and was named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress.
BIO - Bob Edwards is the host of “The Bob Edwards Show” on Sirius XM Radio and “Bob Edwards Weekend,” distributed to public radio stations by Public Radio International (PRI). Both programs feature in-depth interviews with newsmakers, journalists, entertainers and other compelling figures.
Before joining Sirius XM in 2004, Edwards hosted National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Morning Edition” for 24-and-a-half years, attracting more than 13 million listeners weekly. He joined NPR in 1974 and was co-host of NPR’s evening news magazine, “All Things Considered,” until 1979 when he helped launch “Morning Edition.”
He is the author of “Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism.”
Bob Edwards has won the duPont-Columbia Award for radio journalism, a George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for outstanding contributions to public radio. In November of 2004, Edwards was inducted into the national Radio Hall of Fame.
friday, October 1
8 a.m. Registration and Bookstore Open
9 a.m. Welcome - Wendy Spencer, Vice President, Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation & Dakota Institute
9: 30a.m. Mark Bernstein - “World War II on the Air”
In 1937, Edward R. Murrow sailed to London to become chief CBS correspondent in Europe. Murrow – then 29 – had never written a news story in his life. Three years later, his was among the world’s best-known voices. Murrow created the forms of broadcast journalism that stand to this day. He did this by recruiting a team of reporters who in his words, could “think and write.” The first hired was William Shirer, later the famed author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. The second was a North Dakotan, Eric Sevareid, who, postwar, would for decades be the editorial voice while at CBS. Along with Howard K. Smith, Charles Collingwood and others, these were the voices that brought Americans at home the news from the front. This presentation will include audio segments of actual broadcasts.
11:00 a.m. Alan Bjerga - “Severeid's Washington Legacy: Enduring, or Obscured”
As president of the National Press Club, Alan Bjerga is seeing a press corps that's fractured, with a chorus of discordant voices and business models that's leading to major shakeups related to job losses, the decline of major media institutions like Severeid's CBS and the rise of bloggers, niche media and numerous tiny outlets of varying audience reaches and quality. So, what example does Eric Sevareid hold for today's media? Bjerga will explore Eric Sevareid’s relevance for younger journalists working in traditional and newer forms of media today.
In 2009 he was recognized for his work covering U.S. food aid and the famine in Ethiopia. He received awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the North American Agricultural Journalists, and the Overseas Press Club for this work. Before working for Bloomberg News, Bjerga won the NAAJ's top writing award in 2005 while working for the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau.
Bjerga, who grew up on a farm near the town of Motley, Minnesota, went to Concordia College (Minnesota) where he earned a bachelor's degree in History and English Literature and edited the student newspaper, The Concordian (Moorhead). He earned a masters degree in Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota, where he was the managing editor of The Minnesota Daily.
Bjerga began his career with the St. Paul Pioneer Press (Minn.) and also reported for the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader and The Wichita Eagle (Kan.). At his National Press Club inaugural on Jan. 30, 2010, he played guitar and sang lead vocals with "Honky Tonk Confidential", a retro/alt country band with songs written by CBS Face the Nation anchor, Bob Schieffer
12:00 Lunch with Donovan Webster
National Energy Center of Excellence 4th Floor - Tickets for meal required
“Sevareid’s Adventure with the Naga Tribe in Burma”
On August 2, 1943, print and CBS Radio correspondent Eric Sevareid was one of seventeen passengers who stepped aboard a new Allied C-46 to cross the “Burma Hump” into China. An hour into the flight the plane crashed into the mountains of Burma and Eric and his fellow passengers were stranded at the mercy of the Naga tribe of headhunters for fifteen days. Safety lay hundreds of miles away in India, through hostile enemy terrain. Donavan Webster will recount Sevareid’s near fatal plane crash and adventure with the tribe and the perilous trek out of danger.
Friday afternoon
1 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. - Sidney J. Lee Auditorium, Bismarck State College
A recreation of the moment when broadcast news was born in the spring of 1938--not an imitation, but a live radio news roundup. Sirius (formerly NPR) anchor Bob Edwards will participate, and will make remarks about the Murrow Boys and broadcast journalism.
3:00 p.m. Camille D'Arienzo - "Sevareid on War and Peace"
An exploration of Eric Sevareid's commentaries on war.
4:00 p.m. Raymond Schroth - “Eric Sevareid and the Search for an American Identity”
Eric Sevareid believed that the purpose of America was to be an American. He did his reasoning as an American intellectual, and in his mind being an American meant giving oneself over to the idea that at the core of our democracy is “the conscience of a people demanding the best of themselves.” It allowed Eric Sevareid to achieve the rarest and most sought-after ideal of journalism: He became America’s conscience staring back at the nation through the mirror of the media. Eric didn’t so much tell people what to think, as how to think critically and self reflectively as a nation. Raymond Schroth will examine Sevareid’s idea of America and discuss its relevance for today’s Americans.
5:00 - 5:15 p.m. Synthesis - Clay Jenkinson
Friday night
Keynote Address:
7 p.m. Nick Clooney - “The Role of the Press in a Democratic Society”
Belle Mehus Auditorium
Gathering and delivering news has been Nick Clooney’s passion since he was a little boy in Maysville, Kentucky, listening to the unforgettable voices of Ed Murrow, Eric Sevareid, and William Shirer describing the panoramas of World War II on the radio. Drawing on his own experience Clooney will contextualize the ethics of journalism from WII through the present.
But gathering and delivering news has been Nick Clooney's passion since he was a little boy in Maysville, Kentucky, listening to the unforgettable voices of Ed Murrow, Elmer Davis, William Shirer and others describing the panorama of World War II on the radio.
It was in Maysville that Nick began his broadcasting career. His first assignment, appropriately, was reading a newscast. Over the years, Nick Clooney has been a reporter, anchor, managing editor and news director in Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, Salt Lake City, Utah, Buffalo, New York and Los Angeles, California.
When anchoring in Los Angeles, Nick Clooney was selected as one of “the best in the business” of television news by Washington Review of Journalism. He has been inducted into the Cincinnati, Kentucky and Ohio Journalism Halls of Fame, named a Kentucky Distinguished Broadcaster and, most recently, elected to the Ohio Radio and Television Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame.
Nick Clooney has received an EMMY for commentary and another for historical narration. He was nominated three times for National EMMYs for his work with American Movie Classics. In 2006, Clooney and his son George travelled to Darfur, Sudan and filmed a documentary, A Journey to Darfur, which was broadcast on American cable TV as well as in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and France.
In 2008 it was released on DVD with the proceeds from its sale being donated to the International Rescue Committee to help the people of Darfur. Nick Clooney now works with American Life TV cable channel headquartered in Washington, D.C. and continues to write his thrice-weekly column for the Cincinnati/Kentucky Post.
saturday, October 2
8 a.m. – Registration & Bookstore Open - Sidney J Lee Auditorium, Bismarck State College
9 a.m. – Welcome - Larry Skogen, President Bismarck State College
9: 30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. - The Chorus of America, 1963-1977
Assessing Eric Sevareid’s Commentaries on America and the World on the CBS Evening News
Clips of Sevareid commentaries on a range of subjects, followed by a panel of humanities discussion and exploration
• Sevareid and the Space Program
• Sevareid and Civil Rights
• Sevareid and the Assassinations
• Sevareid and Vietnam
• Sevareid and Watergate
• Sevareid the 60s’ Youth Movement
Panelists:
T. Harrel Allen, Camille D’Arienzo, Craig Nelson, Randall Kennedy, Raymond Schroth, and others
Lunch: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. - Lunch with Suzanne St. Pierre - "Eric"
National Energy Center of Excellence 4th Floor - Tickets for meal required
Saturday Afternoon
1:30 p.m. - Jim Leach - Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
“Sevareid and Civil Discourse in a Noisy Democracy”
Sidney J. Lee Auditorium, Bismarck State College
Eric Sevareid understood that words reflect emotion as well as meaning. They clarify -- or cloud -- thought and energize action, sometimes bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts. In the current political climate of America words like 'fascist' or 'communist’ are being used with increasing frequency and creating a culture of incivility. Jim Leach will explore Eric Sevareid’s approach to civil discourse and draw lessons for today’s caustic discourse.
Leach holds eight honorary degrees and has received numerous awards, including the Sidney R. Yates Award for Distinguished Public Service to the Humanities from the National Humanities Alliance; the Woodrow Wilson Award from The Johns Hopkins University; the Adlai Stevenson Award from the United Nations Association; the Edgar Wayburn Award from the Sierra Club; the Wayne Morse Integrity in Politics Award; the Norman Borlaug Award for Public Service; and the Wesley Award for Service to Humanity.
3:00 p.m. Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, with Dennis Weidemann -
“Retracing Canoeing with the Cree”
Both 18, Witte and Bloomfield canoed from the Twin Cities to the Arctic Ocean in 2008. The 2,200-mile journey was inspired by legendary journalist Eric Sevareid’s book Canoeing with the Cree, which described his trek from Minnesota to Hudson Bay. Witte and Bloomfield made the trip in 49 days. Providing a fitting congratulations, Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman wrote of Witte and Bloomfield’s excellent canoe adventure: “Others have done it before. But none, to my knowledge, have done it faster, and few since Sevareid and his paddling partner Walter Port have captured the public’s imagination more effectively.” Bloomfield and Witte will compare and contrast their epic adventure with Sevareid’s during this presentation and slideshow.
Sean Bloomfield also grew up in Chaska, with his parents Patrick and Patricia, brother Jim and sister Cris. Sean also read Canoeing with the Cree, as it was passed down to him at a young age by his dad. He recently finished his senior year as a goalie on the Chaska High School varsity hockey team. He also enjoys spending time with his family at their cabin on the "Iron Range" and also with friends. Besides canoeing, Sean also enjoys water skiing, hunting and fishing. Sean is currently a Junior at Minnesota State, Mankato.
4:00 p.m. Clay Jenkinson - “The Ordeal of William Shirer”
William L. Shirer. Shirer was recruited by Edward R. Murrow before Sevareid, and he, not Murrow, served as the anchor of the first news roundup on March 13, 1938. Shirer, like Sevareid, was a serious intellectual who regarded himself as a writer at least as much as a broadcaster. Unlike Sevareid, Shirer could not settle into a sustainable role as a Sunday news magazine host on CBS. He was the author of three remarkable books: The Berlin Diaries, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and one of the twentieth century’s greatest autobiographies, the three-volume Twentieth Century Journey. The contrast of the Murrow Boys' "other intellectual" creates a historical context for the life and achievement of Eric Sevareid.
The Dakota Institute is working on a documentary film about the life and achievement or Eric Sevareid. The film will be released in 2012 on the occasion of Sevareid's centennial. A short series of clips of the interviews that have already occurred will be shown
5:00 pm - Event Wrap-Up - Wendy Spencer, Vice President, Lewis & Clark Fort Mandan Foundation and the Dakota Institute
Saturday Night
Keynote - Belle Mehus Auditorium
7:00 p.m. - A conversation with Dan Rather and Nick Clooney - “Knowing Eric”
Internationally renowned journalist, Dan Rather, was one of Eric Sevareid’s favorite protégés. Rather will share his memories of Eric and discuss the enduring values Sevareid instilled in him during an informal conversation with close friend Emmy-winning commentator Nick Clooney.
From his first days as the Associated Press reporter in Huntsville, Texas, in 1950, Rather has more than earned his reputation as the “hardest working man in broadcast journalism.” Rather served as anchor and managing editor of the CBS EVENING NEWS from March 9, 1981 to March 9, 2005, the longest such tenure in broadcast journalism history. In 2006 Rather founded the company News and Guts and became anchor and managing editor of HDNet’s DAN RATHER REPORTS, which specializes in investigative journalism and international reporting.
Over the many years of his career, Rather has regularly landed the biggest interviews with the world’s most important and compelling figures, from the famous to the infamous. Rather’s passion for the news, for getting the story and for taking on the most challenging assignments in journalism is unmatched. He has dedicated himself to delivering to the American public coverage that is fair and accurate, no matter the size and scope of the story. He has interviewed every United States president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and virtually every major international leader of the past 30 years. He has received virtually every honor in broadcast journalism, including numerous Emmy and Peabody Awards and citations from critical, scholarly, professional and charitable organizations.
Rather has also authored or co-authored seven books, four of which have become New York Times bestsellers. In 1994, Rather was honored by his alma mater, Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, which named its journalism and communications building after him.
Sunday, october 3
8:30 am - 5:00 pm - Field Trip to Eric Sevareid’s hometown of Velva, ND
Buses leave from Bismarck State College
Thank You to Our
Symposium Sponsors
North Dakota Humanities Council
The Dakota Institute
Bismarck State College
Prarie Public
Dakota Media Access
KX Network
Zimmerman's Furniture
With special appreciation to the People of Velva, North Dakota and Sponsors:
Peoples State Bank
ADM
Farmer's Union Oil Co.
Velva Association of Commerce
Dr. Colleen Hofer
Velva American Legion
CF Industries
Velva Development Corp.
Verendrye Electric
James Maxon Attorney
Trinity Medical Center
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