Hasta La Ideas

A visiting lecturer for the Department of English since last fall, Harvard alum Jill Abramson has today shared invigorating essay in the Harvard Gazette. She became enamored with the power of the press during her freshman year (1972-73), and writes that it is truly inspiring to be back in the student newspaper trenches:

It’s heaven. What better salve for a battle-scarred reporter and editor than to be reminded of what made me fall in love with journalism in the first place. How wonderful to share the reportorial rigor of Isabel Wilkerson or the splendor of Gay Talese’s writing with a dozen of the brightest students in the world. How delightful to invite author Ron Suskind, a former Journal colleague, to class and spend two hours listening to him spill the secret to making a narrative gripping.

Abramson teaches “Introduction to Journalism from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday nights. And when she writes dozen, that is exactly correct. Only 12 students were accepted for each semester.

Read the rest of the essay from the Class of 1976 alum here.
 
[Image via: harvard.edu]