The ability to write clearly, concisely and accurately is always going to be the bedrock, whether you read the words on a CRT or newsprint. And though the delivery vehicle for disseminating the information may be up for grabs, we're still going to be writing about the human condition. So good liberal arts backgrounds are still going to be extremely valuable to writers. What concerns him most about technology is that it allows the process of reporting to become so impersonal. Answering machines, commercial databases and e-mail actually make it possible to interview people and research their backgrounds without ever laying eyes on them.
Technology is wonderful.
Swindle's journalism career began at UNT in the 1960s, when newsrooms were filled with the clatter of wire machines and typewriters, and the school was known as North Texas State University. A journalism major with a minor in political science, Swindle served as editor of the Campus Chat , a twice-weekly newspaper, in 1968. Swindle was named Outstanding Journalism Graduate, and after serving in the Vietnam War with a Naval Security Group, he joined the Fort Worth Press as police and general assignments reporter. Stints with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and Dallas Times Herald led to a job with the Dallas Morning News and, in 1987, an induction into UNT Journalism's Shuford Hall of Honor. Fact is, several professors, but Roy Busby, Red Gibson and Barbara Colegrove in particular, took me under their wings.