Department Features

Apples, granola bars, Minute Rice, check. Menstrual pads, diapers, hand sanitizer, check. Together, journalism professor Betsy O’Donovan and I weaved through the Winco aisles as we crossed items off O’Donovan’s mental list of items to buy for the journalism department food pantry during winter quarter. The pantry, funded and routinely stocked by Western Washington University journalism faculty, was running low, and it was time for a refill.

Following the infamous 2020, this year is full of new beginnings, including the rebranding of The Western Front. Before the newspaper became The Western Front in 1967, it was called the Straight News, the Collegian, The Normal Messenger and the Northwester Viking. Now, it is called The Front, and its staff is focusing on a digital-first presence.

Careful consideration of these changes was made by editors for years, but this quarter, The Front is launching an updated website and logo, new social media strategies and a new weekly podcast.

Campus is desolate besides a few students meandering around. It is late February and cold, but sunny nonetheless. I see Professor Joan Connell, my advisor for Klipsun magazine, sitting cross-legged outside the Communications Facility Building. She is so quaint. 

Joan is wearing a black beret, a scarf, tights and an N95 mask. She looks dressed for an occasion. I do not. 

I see a man hold his phone over his head to photograph one of the construction sites on campus. Assuming it’s Scott Terrell, I head his way. It’s freezing, and feels like it’ll snow. Scott is wearing a funny-looking black fleece hat and a fabric mask with apples on it.

Two years ago, Scott taught my photojournalism class, but since then, we’ve only seen each other sparingly in the hallways. Now, when he glances over, he looks like he has no clue who I am. As I approach him, he says he didn’t recognize me with my mask.

I remember being the 17th person on the waitlist for J207, Newswriting, the primary prerequisite for all journalism classes at Western Washington University. After taking a gap year between high school and college, I was doing everything I could to speed up my graduation process. If I didn’t get into this class, it would change my entire course schedule. 

Checking waitlists on Web4U is a frustrating process, but I was doing it every chance I got: in between classes, on my work break, even as I bumped shoulders with a peer on the jam-packed bus. 

If you find yourself in need of some administrative assistance one of these days, you’ll likely be connected to Jenny Bettis, the journalism departments new department manager. Bettis joined the journalism department in October after her family was caught in the middle of the Paradise Camp Fire in California in 2018. 

“We were living right next to Paradise, where the Paradise fire happened, our landlord wanted to sell the house so, [with my husband’s family here] this was just a safe landing place for us.”

Hamida el-Bour is the director of L’Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information (IPSI), and she is a titan of Tunisian journalism. She began her career as an investigative journalist, and she served for a period as the head of the Tunis-Afrique Presse (TAP) wire service. She spoke with Associate Professor Carolyn Nielsen about some of the changes to Tunisian journalism education following the 2011 Jasmine Revolution.