My short days at The Post taught me so much, so well

Watching The Post tossed me into my own personal Wayback Machine. Tom Hanks as managing editor Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as owner/publisher Katherine Graham might as well have been speaking directly to me. Once upon a time, they did. Romanticize those short encounters with a copy aide from the sports department circa 1978/79 I…

Where’s Mark amid the Diamondback crew?

Yes, my two years toiling for the University of Maryland’s campus daily The Diamondback surely helped shape my career. As much as what I learned in the academic buildings, yes. More? Probably. I wrote hundreds of stories covering the soccer, women’s basketball and lacrosse teams as my primary beats, with coverage about football and men’s…

The end of an era for the little program that could

Brian McDowell took the podium at his final year-end Journalism Convocation at the State University of New York at Morrisville last week. The professor looked somewhat happy to be able to pack away his books and belongings and go back home to spend more time with his wife. And he looked somewhat sad in the…

Back when I was a cover boy

In my day, the SUNY Morrisville journalism classes were spread through many different campus buildings. Charlton Hall. The Library. Lab-Class. The Little Theatre in the Student Activity Center, even, with those fold-over mini-desks in the very spot where the Friars put on their most excellent drama productions. No wonder I still get hit with that…

You taught your students well, and we still appreciate it

Neal and Carol Bandlow laughed when I brought up how a car full of us Morrisville Agricultural and Technical College journalism students would pull into their driveway just a couple miles east of the campus and think nothing about knocking on the door and being welcomed in. That was back in what I consider my…