WCSU in the Age of Reason

“Steal This Blog” made perfect sense to me as the name for my blog. Then I mentioned it to a bunch of people who were born after 1985. Instead of knowing smiles, they gave me blank stares.
Here’s the explanation. Abbie Hoffman was a leader of the Yippies, or Youth International Party, a group of young people who wanted to create a counterculture to American society in the 1960s. While in prison, Hoffman wrote a book and titled it “Steal This Book,” and in interviews he urged potential readers to shoplift it from bookstores. So by taking the name of Hoffman’s book for my blog I not only echo his dissident nature but steal his idea for myself.
As I said, it’s perfect because, by way of introduction, I am a subversive, too; someone who can be counted on to “tell it like it is” (another term from the ’60s). Beneath my bourgeois exterior (four kids with the same wife, job as a bureaucrat for the state and, at one point, owner of a picket fence in my front yard), I’m a radical. I’m just very good at hiding it.
For many years I was a reporter and then editor of The News-Times, the organization that invited me to write this blog. In the job of editor — the leader of the newsroom and the one responsible for how events are covered — I slowly learned the craft of presenting news to the community in a way that would not be routinely offensive. As one of my friends said, more or less, toward the end of my tenure: “You’ve gone a long time without embarrassing yourself.”
With this familiarity and experience, I plan to write occasionally about the state of journalism today, particularly its effect on readers.
For the past three-and-a-half years, I have worked as director of University Relations at Western Connecticut State University. My office publicizes the good works of the university and facilitates communication within the campus community. I love it and will sometimes write here about what is going on at WestConn. (This part won’t be subversive or in any way harmful to my employment. I’m not that radical.)
Finally, the WCSU writing department has asked me to teach a couple of classes. Next semester, I will teach a class on how to write a research paper. Since I am the teacher, I get to decide what we will research, and I chose civil rights in the United States. This experience has been fascinating (to me) and I plan to write about some of the lessons I learn from the front of the classroom.
I don’t expect that what I write here will be “The story that will live.” (In keeping with my theme, I stole that phrase from Lance Williams, a journalist I knew before he became famous for co-writing the book about baseball player Barry Bonds called “Game of Shadows.”) But, to quote Abbie Hoffman, it will be more interesting than most blogs.
If it doesn’t work out, I will change the name of the blog to my second-favorite title: “Finagle A Bagel.” I will explain in a future post.
Follow WCSU at www.wcsu.edu, at facebook.com/westconn and at twitter.com/westconn
Follow Paul Steinmetz at facebook.com/steinmetzp and at twitter.com/pstein