Author reports that Kansas State has offered a news writing course for agricultural students for more than a decade, and with good results.. Believes a course in news writing should not be a universal requirement in the agricultural college curriculum, but emphasizes skills in English.
Supports training of agriculture students in news-writing, and argues that they also should be trained in public speaking. Also: "it would seem that agricultural students should by all means know or learn how to make a living with their hands on land before they take up news-writing and public speaking. Our national literacy of the head is far greater than our literacy of the human hand. We cannot take much of a hand in nation-building from the ground up unless we have trained hands, even in this machine age."
Poem featuring a listener's reaction to an extension agent who used the technique of listening and asking questions. "The other night at meeting house, We listened quiet as a mouse, To hear a man the Council got, 'Splain runnin' farms right on the dot. Instead of talkin' how to plow, And how to feed and milk a cow, How chicken coops get filled with lice, He said he's from our own State College, That had quite a bit of knowledge, Which matched with our own common sense Would knock our losses off the fence. He said most folks is in a groove. Before their business will improve, They've got to open up their mind, And think right sharp why they're behind. He asked us questions straight and hard, And what we done to make hens lay. You'd thought to hear him ask and ask, His head was empty as a cask, But when he finished up with us, We'd never seen so smart a cuss."
"Have I forgotten the toils of the farm and home laborer? Am I unable to appreciate the folks back home; unable to place myself in their surroundings, and unable to feel and to breathe wholesomeness of rural life? If this is true, then 'back ye editor' to where you will once again become steeped in the spirit of rural America."
President's column includes at note: "There are new mediums through which we may serve - the radio and the motion picture. We need to give these more serious attention than we have given them thus far - particularly, the radio. The effective use of both of these, however, needs consideration."
Recommendations from the Professional Development Committee of AAACE. They include sabbatical leaves, exchange appointments, short-term media experience (unpaid leave from college position). "Members of the association were emphatic in their statement that editors should be given the same privileges of sabbatical leave as other college workers and that they should develop their jobs and positions so that they would have a rank equivalent to that of any professorship on the campus."
Abstracted from a talk at the 1935 AAACE meeting, Cornell University, New York. A strong case for reporting vividly, from observation, and with heart. "Flesh and blood on bare bones."
