November 6, 1939
Weekly fifteen-minute campus newscasts began in conjunction with WJBO. Sponsored by Daily Reveille and Sigma Delta Chi professional journalism fraternity.
Former professor and Manship Advisory Committee member Sig Mickelson discusses his radio journalism course at LSU and his students' production of a radio news broadcast at station WJBO. Sig Mickelson Oral History Interview, Mss. 4700.0220, LLMVC, LSU Libraries.
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SIG MICKELSON: You know, I don't think there were any adjunct teachers. I know that I met some members of the staff, the managing editor I think was a man named C.P. Lighter if I'm not mistaken. I know I met him and the manager of the radio station, they owned WJBO at that time. And I . . . Actually I'm not sure whether I taught the first course in radio journalism or not but at least I had one. And we talked the manager of the station into giving us a half-hour once a week or maybe just fifteen minutes once a week to do a student produced show from here on WJBO. So we had that contact with a Manship organization. I understand Doug Manship was in school here at that time, but I didn't know him until many years later.
MELISSE CAMPBELL: Did you . . . Did the students consider the radio broadcasting innovative at the time? To be able to broadcast a program from LSU?
MICKELSON: Yeah, I think so. Because, you see, radio news really only dates back, oh, six or seven years before that. And there was really very little before about 1936 or '37. It was still on a real state of flux at that time so that this was something quite new. I'm not sure we did very well, but at least there was something.
CAMPBELL: What type of facilities were available to the journalism students?
MICKELSON: Well, at that time, it was over where the president . . . the Chancellor now sits. In that building, the Reveille has its presses and linotype machines and engraving facilities all in that building. I think that was operated largely professionally with some students working on an hourly basis as helpers. Facilities, there really wasn't very much. I know that there was a type lab there. At that time apparently typography was a very important course. And so they had some type places enough for students to play around with that. Since many of them were going out to the rural press, it seems to make sense to teach. They had an editing lab with a horseshoe table. But I'm not sure if there were very many typewriters around during that period, a few but that's about it. For broadcasting purposes, we got a microphone and a loudspeaker and strung a wire along the ceiling so you could put a microphone in my office and listen to it down at the . . .
CAMPBELL: So y'all broadcasted from here?
MICKELSON: Well, that wasn't broadcast. That was just room to room but at least it was possible to simulate a broadcast. Put a person at the microphone in the office and everybody else listens. Now it's pretty primitive, but at least that's about the best we could do.
CAMPBELL: So when y'all produced the show for WJBO y'all would go down to the station?
MICKELSON: Yeah. And generally the way that was assigned was that it was sort of a Reveille type of operation. You'd assign the students to go out and cover certain things happening on the campus or futures. And each student then would cover his own story and read it on the air. I imagine it was pretty bad. I'd hate to have to listen to it.
CAMPBELL: Do you think the students were prepared very well for a career in journalism at that point? Or was it . . .
MICKELSON: Well for the types . . . yeah, now they were . . . I think . . . You see we were really closer to a trade school than anything very thoughtful. Now they were getting a college education, so it really wasn't trade school in that sense. But yeah, they seemed to be able to move into a weekly newspaper fairly adequately and move through it quite well. Some of them went on like Jewel Claitor, for example, who wound up at the AP [Associated Press] in New York, and it seemed . . . I don't know what happened to her, but she seems to have done fairly well there. So yeah, in terms of status of journalism at the time from a purely professional point of view. What we were not doing too much of, I think, was talking ideas. I think it was pretty well restricted to . . . I won't call it trade school, but at least to techniques, how to do it.
Former professor and Manship Advisory Committee member Sig Mickelson discusses his radio journalism course at LSU and his students' production of a radio news broadcast at station WJBO. Sig Mickelson Oral History Interview, Mss. 4700.0220, LLMVC, LSU Libraries.
View Transcript
SIG MICKELSON: You know, I don't think there were any adjunct teachers. I know that I met some members of the staff, the managing editor I think was a man named C.P. Lighter if I'm not mistaken. I know I met him and the manager of the radio station, they owned WJBO at that time. And I . . . Actually I'm not sure whether I taught the first course in radio journalism or not but at least I had one. And we talked the manager of the station into giving us a half-hour once a week or maybe just fifteen minutes once a week to do a student produced show from here on WJBO. So we had that contact with a Manship organization. I understand Doug Manship was in school here at that time, but I didn't know him until many years later.
MELISSE CAMPBELL: Did you . . . Did the students consider the radio broadcasting innovative at the time? To be able to broadcast a program from LSU?
MICKELSON: Yeah, I think so. Because, you see, radio news really only dates back, oh, six or seven years before that. And there was really very little before about 1936 or '37. It was still on a real state of flux at that time so that this was something quite new. I'm not sure we did very well, but at least there was something.
CAMPBELL: What type of facilities were available to the journalism students?
MICKELSON: Well, at that time, it was over where the president . . . the Chancellor now sits. In that building, the Reveille has its presses and linotype machines and engraving facilities all in that building. I think that was operated largely professionally with some students working on an hourly basis as helpers. Facilities, there really wasn't very much. I know that there was a type lab there. At that time apparently typography was a very important course. And so they had some type places enough for students to play around with that. Since many of them were going out to the rural press, it seems to make sense to teach. They had an editing lab with a horseshoe table. But I'm not sure if there were very many typewriters around during that period, a few but that's about it. For broadcasting purposes, we got a microphone and a loudspeaker and strung a wire along the ceiling so you could put a microphone in my office and listen to it down at the . . .
CAMPBELL: So y'all broadcasted from here?
MICKELSON: Well, that wasn't broadcast. That was just room to room but at least it was possible to simulate a broadcast. Put a person at the microphone in the office and everybody else listens. Now it's pretty primitive, but at least that's about the best we could do.
CAMPBELL: So when y'all produced the show for WJBO y'all would go down to the station?
MICKELSON: Yeah. And generally the way that was assigned was that it was sort of a Reveille type of operation. You'd assign the students to go out and cover certain things happening on the campus or futures. And each student then would cover his own story and read it on the air. I imagine it was pretty bad. I'd hate to have to listen to it.
CAMPBELL: Do you think the students were prepared very well for a career in journalism at that point? Or was it . . .
MICKELSON: Well for the types . . . yeah, now they were . . . I think . . . You see we were really closer to a trade school than anything very thoughtful. Now they were getting a college education, so it really wasn't trade school in that sense. But yeah, they seemed to be able to move into a weekly newspaper fairly adequately and move through it quite well. Some of them went on like Jewel Claitor, for example, who wound up at the AP [Associated Press] in New York, and it seemed . . . I don't know what happened to her, but she seems to have done fairly well there. So yeah, in terms of status of journalism at the time from a purely professional point of view. What we were not doing too much of, I think, was talking ideas. I think it was pretty well restricted to . . . I won't call it trade school, but at least to techniques, how to do it.
