Communications Welcomes Distinguished Visiting Professor
Bruce D. Itule, director of student media and clinical professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona State University, has joined the College of Communications this fall as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism.
Itule will teach reporting and news writing and will team-teach a class on in-depth reporting with Communications Dean Douglas A. Anderson. Itule and Anderson have been professional colleagues and good friends for more than twenty years, a factor Itule says was a major motivation for his decision to come to Penn State.
Itule adds he looks forward to "getting away for a semester to see how other universities teach journalism." He believes Penn State has an excellent reputation and is eager for a change of scenery.
A native Arizonan, Itule earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Arizona and a master's degree in journalism and history at the University of Colorado. He went on to spend more than three decades working in journalism, launching his professional career as a photo lab technician at the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson.
He later worked as a reporter or editor at the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera, The Denver Post, The Phoenix Gazette, and the Minneapolis Star. From 1980 to 1985, he worked at the Chicago Tribune, where his last position was night city editor.
Itule is the co-author of several books on journalism, including News Writing and Reporting for Today's Media, Writing the News, and Contemporary News Reporting (all co-authored by Anderson), and Visual Editing (co-authored by Howard I. Finberg). He has also written articles for several professional journals and popular magazines, including Phoenix Magazine and Arizona Highways. He is currently writing fiction.
Itule refers to himself as a "taskmaster" who demands hard work from his students. However, he notes that at the beginning of each semester, he assures students that if they put time and effort into learning reporting, he will dedicate his time and effort to helping them.
His strategy clearly works. In 1999, Itule was selected as a Freedom Forum Journalism Teacher of the Year. The Freedom Forum, a private foundation that promotes free-press issues and journalism education, honors three American university professors each year who have a strong "commitment to setting the highest standards in the classroom, then helping the students meet those standards."
His students had flooded the foundation with letters. Itule says reading the "wonderful things" in the letters made him "teary-eyed" and proud.
Itule's areas of teaching expertise include reporting, news writing, and editing. His research interests include the newspaper editorial process and journalism history, with special attention to Arizona journalism and history. Although he is looking forward to his semester at Penn State, he says his Arizona "roots" won't be far from his mind.
Arizona State won't be forgotten during his visit, either. Itule will continue to help operate the university's large student media department, using e-mail and the phone to stay connected with his staff and students.