WWU Journalism Department Features

This spring, Don Shelton and Natalie Breymeyer are each teaching a section of Western’s reporting course, JOUR 307. While these two professors may have very different journalistic backgrounds, both hope to inspire through instruction.

Check out the games we played at the ’23 Journalism Picnic!

Lyle E. Harris, a journalism professor emeritus, was the only person to receive a Celebration of Excellence honor despite no longer teaching courses at Western. Harris received the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award to recognize the lasting impact he made on those he taught.

Mitch Evich made his mark at The Western Front in the early 80s as an up-and-coming reporter and editor with a knack for principled news writing and inspiring the same in others, including one of his life-long friends.

In 2022 that friend established a scholarship in his honor.

Students seeking journalism advising will have the joy of being greeted by new faces Jennifer Dalton and Colleen van Pelt, who were welcomed into their journalism department positions as department manager and program coordinator in the fall of 2022.

Western professor Brian J. Bowe took over Western’s journalism department chair position this fall. When expressing his desire to be chair, Bowe told his colleagues that he wanted to adopt the motto, “let’s succeed together.”

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.

Photos and highlights from the 2019 journalism department picnic.

Betsy O’Donovan came to the journalism department in fall quarter of 2018. She’s from North Carolina, if the many stickers and posters decorating her office don’t give that fact away, the frequent “y’all’s” do.

She is warm and sincere. Everyone who visits her office is quickly invited to take a Snickers from her well-stocked candy mug. When the door to her office is closed there’s a thought-provoking question written on the back for students to write an answer to while they wait. Most of all, she loves her position, and it shows.

2019 is a busy year for Professor Brian J. Bowe.

On Jan. 4, Bowe began his journey to Jordan where he is teaching mass communication theory for five months.

The exchange is facilitated by the U.S. Fulbright Scholar Program and Bowe is one of 800 awarded this opportunity. For those that know Bowe, the exchange falls perfectly in line with the professor’s interests. He’s authored many peer-reviewed journal articles about Islamic media relations and started learning Arabic about ten years ago.

Joan Connell, a senior instructor with 42 years of professional journalism experience, is getting ready to publish her first book “Healing All Creation: Genesis, The Gospel of Mark and The Story of the Universe.”

In his most recent work, “Anticancer Living: Transform Your Life and Health with the Mix of Six ,” master writer and senior instructor at Western, Stephen Howie, gracefully tells the story of people and science to take an insightful look into the relationship between lifestyle choices and cancer. Howie helped produce Anticancer Living as a ghostwriter and collaborator. The book is authored by Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., and Alison Jefferies, MEd.

At the start of September, 2019, three Western journalism professors and six journalism students will be traveling to Tunisia to embark on an educational exchange.

Thanks to a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia, Carolyn Nielsen, Joe Gosen and Brian J. Bowe will be able to spend two weeks in Tunisia before the start of fall quarter and later host Tunisian students at Western.

Within the walls of Western’s journalism department, a vast array of faculty exist. Among them is Dean Wright, an adjunct professor with a long resume and a passion for ethics.

Wright’s teenage years were spent admiring the sense of social justice in the 1960s, leading to his wanting to be a politician. Later, however, he decided to test the waters in journalism.

“I decided that it’s a lot more interesting to write about politicians than to be one,” Wright said.