Tag Archives: Journalism

Offseason wrap up

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At the beginning of the fall semester I wrote a short piece about what it meant to finally have my shot at the Missourian, and I wanted to make it count. And hell, after more than 40 bylines, a theatre agreement, performance funding and a new UM System president, I think I’ve made the first impression I laid out in that original post.

But a new year brings a new semester and a new set of challenges, and it’s time to get right back at it.

All of the lessons I learned over my first semester at the Missourian were really just the foundation and basic structure of what I’d like to do as a professional journalist and writer — like a Phase 1 of the “Missouri Method” we were promised as freshmen.

But after the first reporting class for the Missourian, the method isn’t based so much structure as it is opportunity.

I’m taking Advanced Reporting this semester (and have the distinct privilege of staying on the higher education beat, which means I get to keep all those sources I’ve come to know so well) which is essentially enterprise reporting 101. It’s all the same newsroom resources without all the general assignment strings attached and that freedom will give me the chance to take on longer, more challenging pieces within the higher ed beat.

There’ll be more investigation, more analysis, bigger issues and harder hitting reporting. I’ll have more time to settle in to a big work and make it a reporting masterpiece.

So after a semi-hiatus from (almost) all things work this winter break, I’ll be back in Columbia Saturday to get to work on “what’s next.”

On the slate now are a few things I can talk about, and a couple of things I want to keep secret (for now).

Obviously UM System tuition increases will dominate the coming weeks, but I want to get a good jump on one of my secret ideas and hopefully have something really substantial out in the next four or five weeks.

Issues like e-Learning, the system retirement plan and even (dare I say) an MU diversity course requirement could be major players in 2012.

But not to get ahead of myself, what’s most important is to plug back in to the Columbia community and settle down for what should be the most challenging — and hopefully satisfying — semester I’ve had yet.

We’ll have a new president Tuesday!

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Yes indeed, this whole thing is finally coming to a close.

After a yearlong search, the UM System will name its 23rd president tomorrow and we still have no idea who it is.

The last presidential search was spoiled before an announcement was made when two potential candidates (U.S. Rep Kenny Hulshov, and then New Jersey businessman Terry Sutter) were publicly considered, but board Chairman Warren Erdman has made damn sure that won’t happen again this time.

Last Friday, Janese Silvey of the Columbia Daily Tribune checked into a blog reporting that University of Florida president Bernie Machen was the board’s finalist, but Silvey was able to shoot that down with a call with new curator Craig Van Matre.

Since then, there haven’t really been any good, constructive rumors (that I’ve heard). So it seems we won’t know the president until the board announces one, just the way Erdman designed it.

As always (of course I wouldn’t miss the big finale!) I’ll be at the announcement live tweeting from @zach_murdock and @CoMissourian. For the most comprehensive coverage of the new president, check out columbiamisourian.com for articles and check back here for more behind-the-scenes and analysis.

UPDATE: presidential search analysis

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*This is an update on the post titled “A quick, semi-speculative presidential search analysis” that I published Monday night about this week’s developments in the UM System presidential search.*

I’ll be straightforward — I was wrong. My initial hunch that the UM System Board of Curators would announce a new president this week turns out to be incorrect.

I talked about this gut feeling with UM System spokeswoman Jennifer Hollingshead after Tuesday’s search advisory committee meeting and I believe that may have prompted the phone call I received while I worked on my story.

Hollingshead called to explain that after talking with board Chairman Warren Erdman that she didn’t want to string people along and leave folks confident that the meeting with a single candidate today would mean that we should expect a presidential selection Friday morning.

I think my openness with her — and my not-so-subtle assertion to her that I really did believe we’d have a new president this week — put her in a position where she saw what direction my writing would take. On the phone we even spoke about how the nature of Tuesday’s meeting certainly made it seem to the all of the media present that the search was all but officially over.

But, she assured me that the search is very much alive and kicking. Which means I need a new hunch…

Now I think I may understand the procedure the rest of this search could take. Perhaps (and of course, I’m still stuck speculating here) the search advisory committee will reconvene again — and even once (twice?) more — and interview this list of the curator’s decided finalists one by one.

That would mean that over winter break this advisory committee could continue to interview candidates individually and get a sense for which finalist they think is the best fit for the system. And that means we’ve still got some time on our hands.

This revelation changes things for me, and shakes up any idea of a timeline that I thought I had. Frankly, I think we may just have to wait and see how this week plays out before I can predict how things may continue.

I’ll be in St. Louis for the board’s regularly scheduled December meetings this Thursday and Friday. As always, I’ll be tweeting from @zach_murdock, blogging right here and publishing on columbiamissourian.com — follow along at all three for the latest (and I’d say most comprehensive) coverage/analysis of the #prezsearch.

A quick, semi-speculative presidential search analysis

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I’ve had a few gut feelings about the presidential search in the last week or so. As a matter of logistics and being prepared to break the story, I’m stuck speculating (we have been all semester, I’m looking at you SEC…) about will happen next. Just what will those darn curators do now?

For months the search has been veiled in this secretive, elaborate web of public notices and closed meetings. We know virtually nothing about any candidates or their qualifications — not even very good rumors — and up until now we’ve never had any idea when a new president might be announced.

But suddenly, I can see the light.

The Board of Curators has passed a list of an undisclosed (surprise) number of finalists to an advisory committee made up of representatives from all walks of academic life at all four UM System campuses.

That’s all fine and dandy, but what that means for us [reporters, the media, et al] is that now that the list of finalists is out and about, there is in fact a timeline for an announcement.

It may be subtle and certainly unintentional, but there are 20 members on the advisory committee. That means there’s upwards of 30+ people (including the curators and involved UM System admins) who know the remaining candidates — and likely know who the front-runner is — spread across the state.

Of course they’re all bound to secrecy, but the curators must understand that the longer they wait with this many people in the know, the higher the risk that one person drops one clue that just happens to make sense to the one reporter who hears it who is able to connect it and figure out the candidate. No matter how far-fetched, it could happen. And the curators have taken such care to be so secret, it would seem there’s no way they’d allow that much risk this late in the game.

I’ve been embedded in this story since the beginning of this semester. So when board Chairman Warren Erdman tells me that the curators will receive the advisory committee’s report Thursday afternoon, I understand that the curators will have two executive sessions (those are the closed-door, private meetings) to discuss the matters at their regularly scheduled meetings this week — all before the normally scheduled press conference Friday morning.

Read for yourself part of the email exchange I had with UM Spokeswoman Jennifer Hollingshead this afternoon. Sometimes the raw answers and context can be more telling than just the parts that make it into my story.

I don’t know about the other news outlets, but I’m letting my colleagues at the Missourian know they’re all on call Friday morning — because I think we’re going to have a new UM System president before this week is out.

I’ll be keeping things updated on my Twitter, @zach_murdock, following Tuesday’s advisory committee meeting and all day Thursday and Friday when the board meets in full at UMSL. Stay tuned to Twitter and columbiamissourian.com for the latest in UM System president news.

Are we spending our time correctly?

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Ibuprofen retailers across the Columbia metro area are breathing a sigh of relief after a convoluted performance funding proposal forced all involved to make a run on headache relief medication the past six weeks.

Credit to graphics gal Rachel Rice at the Columbia Missourian for putting together this visual.

But all is calm now, as it seems that the train that left the station weeks ago is well out of sight now — the performance measures faculty members hotly debated for several weeks made it through Wednesday’s general faculty meeting without a scratch.

Faculty seemed pretty apathetic to performance funding in way that had to be expected, I guess, after the bleak warning MU Budget Director Tim Rooney issued before the presentation of the performance measures.

Missourian columnist (and former executive editor) George Kennedy said it best when he said, “Tim didn’t hesistate to wipe the smiles off our faces.” Rooney briefly, matter-of-fact-ly explained we definitely won’t be getting any new funding next year — in fact, he said we could be facing a 5% decrease.

Krawitz went one step farther, claiming we shouldn’t expect new funding the year after, either — or the year after, or the year after, or the year after.

And since performance funding measures would only apply to new funding, Krawitz urged faculty not to fear if Mizzou isn’t adequately represented by the proposed measures because they’ll never get used without new funding.

I tried to encapsulate that in my most recent article about the model:

Laughter rattled through Chamber Auditorium in the MU Student Center as Nikki Krawitz, University of Missouri System vice president for finance and administration, answered one short but important question about the funding model.

The question: Does this make any difference whatsoever?

“The short answer?” Krawitz said as laughter subsided. “No.”

Not to discredit the importance of the discussion about performance funding measures — or the hard work Krawitz, her task force, COPHE and college administrators across the state have done — but if we really can’t expect new funding to be used with the performance measures, did we all just waste our time?

It’s a silly hypothetical question but, how much money could we have raised if every minute we had talked about performance funding over the last year was put into fundraising efforts? And though that question oversimplifies the issue, it gets to the heart of it — at what point could (should?) we have decided to ditch performance funding, knowing it would be moot with the funding crisis we’ve got now?

Could the UM System have prioritized differently after abandoning performance funding? Focused on more pertinent issues?

After following the model this fall and getting to sit down and talk with Krawitz about the ins-and-outs of the idea — including the grim funding outlook — it just seems to me like she had, and still has, plenty more viable and important things to work on for this university.

So why waste her time on an under-funded, disliked, already twice-failed performance funding idea?

Centralia Feature

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If you take the time to read anything today, please sit down and read through everything that’s been done about Centralia in the Columbia Missourian this week.

It’s a fantastic text piece with good mutlimedia and photos, and it was put together by a wonderful reporter/colleague of mine, Elizabeth Pearl.

In the piece she writes:

Centralia residents have set out to prove that modern life is not incongruent with community values, that they can grow like other cities in Boone County without becoming them — fully modernized, ignoring history or losing that family atmosphere that causes people to wave to strangers on the street.

Seriously, give it a good, hard read. It’s a really well written piece by one of — if not the best writers in our class right now.