My first venture into The Oklahoma Daily newsroom was probably as a pimple-faced, long-haired sophomore in the summer of 1976. My assignment was covering student government and the goings-on inside Ellison Hall. My anxiety was soon overcome when I witnessed a senior, a returning war veteran, let an OU administrator know that he couldn’t control what was in the newspaper any more than Nixon could control The Washington Post and that if he didn’t leave the newsroom he would be physically ejected. Granted, we were all still basking in Watergate’s afterglow. The atmosphere was defiant. Journalism was again an honorable major. We lived and breathed The Daily and looked forward to every issue and adviser Chuck House’s daily public critique.
Later, as Chuck’s successor, I tried to follow his lead and give the students as much support as they wanted but back off and let them publish the newspaper. Like the newspaper business itself, every day teaching and advising in Copeland Hall was different. One day, we sent tall, lanky reporter Omer Gillham to an OU Board of Regents steak-dinner meeting. I told him it would be unethical for him to eat with the board and he should just observe and take notes. They continually offered him a plate and he grew hungrier as each course was served. Finally, he could take no more. The president’s office called the next day to complain that Omer had disrupted the meeting by ordering a pizza that was delivered. “Ding, dong,” went the president’s home door bell. “Did someone order a pizza?”
In the summer of 1988, Ralph Sewell and I took Daily staff members to the national political conventions as credentialed correspondents for state daily newspapers. Half of the students went to the Democrat’s big party in Atlanta and the other half went to New Orleans for the Republican convention. One of our Student Media Hall of Fame honorees, Dave Fallis, was among the Atlanta group. To save a night’s lodging, we always checked out of our hotel on the last day, filed our stories, and headed home in the OU van assigned to us. About 4 a.m. we stopped at the Shoney’s in Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley. The students were running on coffee-fueled adrenaline. No one had slept and the food and additional coffee lifted their filters. As expected the Shoney’s had every kind of Elvis poster, doll, trinket, hat or clothing item ever made and our waitress was trying to make a sale. “No thanks,” Fallis told her. “But can you tell us where we can go to get some really tacky Elvis stuff. Your stuff is just too good.”
We laughed all the way to Arkansas.
The Daily turned 100 this year — view our commemorative centennial edition here and read more memories from former Daily adviser Jack Willis here.
