Radio/TV Class of ’71 Secures Room Dedicated

to Beloved Professor

Posted on September 13, 2008 by Katie Prince
 

The Radio/TV class of 1971 met on Thursday at The Wine Cellar & Bistro, a dimly-lit, charming restaurant on Cherry Street. While there, my group and I managed to talk with some of the alumni about the dedication of the Dr. Edward C. Lambert Seminar Room in the new Reynolds Journalism Institute. Lambert, who pioneered the broadcast movement in the early seventies, was not slotted to receive a room in his name in the new building. When Nan Bauroth discovered that from the Alumni newsletter earlier this year, she wrote a letter to the editor detailing why Dr. Lambert deserved a room. A classmate that she had not kept in touch with, Paul Fiddick, read her letter and agreed – so much so that he began to try to raise money for one. Within fifteen days, he had gathered $300,000 in support of the new room. As Ms. Bauroth says, “it [the speed of the fundraising] speaks to the nature of Dr. Lambert and his legacy.”

As we spoke with the alumni, it became clear just the effect that Dr. Lambert had on the lives of his pupils. Each of them spoke of his lasting legacy and alluded to the parallel between the broadcast of their generation and the burgeoning digital media industry of today. Most had positive things to say about the future of journalism and have in fact stayed up-to-date with the newest technology. Mike Wheeler, in his youth Dr. Lambert’s graduate assistant, helped to launch “Jacked“, a website that allows its viewers to follow the Missouri Tigers by chatting with Missourian reporters at the games.

Overwhelmingly, the Radio/TV class of 1971 had high hopes for the future of journalism, a relatively rare outlook these days. They see the changing industry – the switch to digital – as an opportunity rather than the disintegration of “real” journalism because thirty-seven years ago, they were standing on the same precipice as print shifted into broadcast, which is now one of the foremost journalistic industries.