Union Members Protest Neuharth Appearance p.15

By: ALLAN WOLPER DETROIT SUNDAY JOURNAL editors say the College Media Advisers acted insensitively and inappropriately by having Al Neuharth as its keynote speaker, a charge rebutted by the convention organizers.
"I don't understand the level of consciousness at the college campuses these days," said Tom Schram, deputy editor of the newspaper published by the striking reporters of the Knight-Ridder owned Detroit Free Press and the Gannett-owned Detroit News.
"It was inappropriate to invite him to be the keynote speaker," said Schram, who worked for the Free Press before the July 1995 walkout began. "There was nothing wrong in inviting him, but it was terribly insensitive to have him there as the keynote speaker.
"Gannett is trying to kill us," Schram said. "They are making war against the workers. Having him there in the keynote role legitimizes what they are doing. If they had called us, we would have asked them to invite someone else."
Neuharth currently writes a column for USA Today, the newspaper he founded when he was chairman of Gannett.
However, Neuharth no longer has any official ties to the chain.
John David Reed, the CML convention coordinator, said Neuharth was invited because he was a longtime friend of college journalism.
"He was one of our keynote speakers in 1994 in New Orleans and gave a very inspirational speech," said Reed, who advises the Eastern Illinois University publications.
"We like to get speakers who were involved with their student newspapers. Al was the editor of his college paper in South Dakota."
Reed said it was wrong to inject politics into a student conference on journalism.
"We don't have a political litmus test for our speaker," Reed said.
"I don't see how journalism is related to the Detroit strike. We didn't ask him to analyze the labor situation. We asked him to talk about journalism now and in the next century."
Reed, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 to 1972, said Neuharth wasn't at Orlando to ask the students to cross the picket line.
"My personal opinion is that students should not engage in strike breaking," Reed said. "Al wasn't asking them to do that."
Joe Adams, the sports editor of the Sunday Journal, said the grants distributed by Gannett and Knight-Ridder to journalism schools played a subtle role in the selection of convention speakers.
"It doesn't surprise me that people who espouse high ethical standards would support Gannett and Knight-Ridder, who support them with grants," Adams said.
"Journalists are supposed to preach fairness," added Adams, a former sports copy editor with Detroit News. "If those people say that the strike here has nothing to do with journalism, they have a lot to learn."
Tom Keekley, communications manager of the Associated Collegiate Press, which co-sponsored the Orlando convention, disagreed.
Keekley said the Detroit strike involved economic issues, rather than journalism concerns.
"Our convention is not about economic issues," Keekley said. "It is about journalism issues. We invited Al Neuharth because of his involvement in the First Amendment issues and his work for Freedom Forum.
"The labor issues in Detroit would not have any bearing on who we would invite to our journalism conference."