On April 16, famed journalist and media consultant J. Ford Huffman came to give a lecture on today’s news. J. Ford Huffman has worked at papers all throughout the country and world. He was the managing editor at both the Democrat and Chronicle and the Times-Union in Rochester during the 80s. More recently, he has been working as a media consultant for numerous different papers throughout the world. He has helped with writing, editing and presentation at papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post and the Hindustan Times in India. Huffman also helped create the prototype for USA Today where he was also the editor for Page 1.
Huffman was invited to come and talk at RIT about “Today’s News Media – A Heart-wrenching, Heart-warming World of Staggering Potential.” Communications students, liberal arts students, and numerous other majors came out to listen to Huffman’s lecture. A number of communication professors were also there to listen in.
During the hour and a half long lecture, Huffman discussed how in a world of growing digitalization, print media still, and will, remain a prominent source of information. People have a natural sense of wanting to be informed on what is going on in the world. Print media has been known for its authoritative and trustworthy voice. However, he also talked about the importance of having the knowledge of the different types of media that news comes in these days. With the growth of technology, a variety of new mediums have become available to the public. Now someone can look up The New York Times on their iPhone, catch up on the latest news in Vanity Fair on their iPad and, of course, Google anything under the sun.
In the end, the real message that J. Ford Huffman was trying to get across is that if you want to survive in the world of media, you have to evolve with it and always remain open to learning what you need to learn to survive in this ever-evolving industry.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at RIT chapter.