Responsibilities to readers, can-do spirit among lessons learned by former Skiff editor
For the Skiff’s 100th birthday, Ken Bunting reminisces on memories cultured at TCU and the professors that made an impact on him. Bunting is now the Executive Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
COMMENTARY
Kenneth F. Bunting

For the Skiff’s 100th birthday, Ken Bunting reminisces on memories cultured at TCU and the professors that made an impact on him. Bunting is now the Executive Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

But for the conversation between my assistant and Brandon Ortiz, the Daily Skiff’s impressive young editor, I might still be stuck for a lead.

I mean, how the heck should I start?

For sure, getting to salute the Skiff on its 100th birthday is special. It is something that would make any alumnus feel good, something of an honor to boot. Simply having the chance to share a few words and thoughts with the current student and faculty population on campus is, in itself, an enticing enough prospect.

But if there is an obvious, no-brainer approach for starting a column like this one, it was entirely lost on yours truly.

Lost, that is, until my able assistant Michele Mosher, having spoken to Brandon moments earlier, came into my office and popped the magical question.

“Do you know how that paper got its name?” Michele asked, amused at what she had just heard and absolutely certain she was about to teach me a bit of TCU history.

A funny and almost mystical coincidence is that a few minutes before, I had just told the story to John Joly, the public affairs director at my newspaper. Michele questioned Brandon because she remembered Fort Worth is “landlocked.” John just thought it was a funny name for a newspaper.

Although it is published history now, I have always considered the story more lore than historical fact. I still do. So, it mattered not that Brandon’s version, as relayed by Michele, has a few nuances and twists different from what I recall.

The founding editor, whose name now escapes my fuzzy memory, began the paper as an entrepreneurial endeavor. He had lobbied mightily for administration financial support. Nothing doing. Then, he tried some well-heeled alumni. Nada. Dismayed, but not dissuaded, he and some friends went on to start the Skiff as a business, knowing they would sink or swim on luck and their own business savvy.

He named it The Skiff, the legend goes, because he saw it as the “dream boat” that would pay his
tuition and launch him on the way to success.

Now, the way I wrote that doesn’t begin to do justice to the way I heard it. No one could tell the story like the late Lewis C. Fay.

For my money, the way the Skiff got its unusual name was Professor Fay’s second best lecture. The moral of it had something to do with perseverance, determination and the can-do spirit. But it was his dramatic recitation that made it so good.

Professor Fay, or “Big Lew” as he was known both affectionately and sometimes derisively, had a striking resemblance to John Houseman, the late Romanian-born character actor known for his stern, no-nonsense demeanor. But Fay, who came to teach at TCU after being Sunday editor of Hearst’s then-dominant San Antonio Light, was a real professor, long before Houseman’s Oscar-winning performance in “The Paper Chase.” Too, Fay was far more intimidating and had a greater dramatic presence. He was faculty adviser to the Skiff during my years, and then later became department chair.

So, if how the Skiff got its name was his second best lecture, you might be asking what was his best?

That would be the one that wasn’t a lecture at all. I heard it four times, once as a Skiff reporter and three times as an editor. As each semester began, Fay would gather the new staffers, within earshot of the veteran staffers and editors, and begin to explain that he wasn’t lecturing, but introducing himself. This wasn’t a class in the traditional sense, but a “news lab” with a real product to produce. He wasn’t the editor, but the faculty adviser. The assignments, the editorial decisions and most of the feedback would come from the editors, not him.

“I’ll be right behind that door,” he would say, pointing to his tiny office in the corner of the Neely Building.

He went on to explain that Skiff staffers had no greater responsibility at TCU or in life than to fulfill their staff obligations to the Skiff. He never said it, but one gathered that his or her grades depended in a big way on getting his point about responsibility.

The non-lecture always ended with a dramatic flourish. With his voice trembling, Fay would explain that if a reporter on assignment drove his car off a bridge and into the Trinity River, it was his or her responsibility to muster all his or her strength, climb the banks, plop a quarter into a telephone and file a story — before deadline!

There was nothing in his voice to suggest he wasn’t at least half-serious.

I’ll spare you the details of the time Fay angrily dismissed a class early because I had fallen asleep, while seated too close to the front. He had been delivering a lecture on editorial writing that closely followed the chapters of a textbook he had just written.

I will say, though, that something about responsibility to a newspaper and its readers, and something about the can-do spirit, has stuck with me all these years. Lots of lessons from TCU have stuck with me.

If I’m not mistaken, Doug Newsom, my dear friend and mentor, is the only faculty member still at TCU who goes back to my days there. I remember her fondly, as well as her late husband, Bob Carroll, who recruited me out of community college.

I was the TCU journalism department’s first black student, only the second African-American to earn an undergraduate degree at TCU and the first with a journalism major.

When I mention that, people often ask me about the difficulties I faced. Or even more pointedly, they ask if I remember bigotry and ignorance. Yes, I do, if I force myself. But I have far more vivid memories of kindness and encouragement from people like Doug and Bob. And yes, “Lew” Fay in all his toughness.

Then, there was Professor Jay Milner, the brilliant Texas writer who partied more than he wrote and nurtured more than he taught. One night after a big on-campus awards banquet, I tried to slip out of an after-party at Jay’s house to retrieve my car from the old Pete Wright parking lot. I needed to drive my parents to Love Field for their late-night flight back to Houston.

“Stay a little longer,” Jay insisted, saying I could drive Mom and Dad to the airport in his wife’s new station wagon. “Just bring it back in the morning.”

I hope the current crop of TCU students know they are attending a university rich in history, rich in lore, rich in tradition. I especially hope that all TCU Journalism students hear that hokey story about how the Skiff was named.

Happy 100th Birthday Skiff! You’ve been a “dream boat” for lots of us.

Kenneth F. Bunting is the Executive Editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
He graduated from TCU in 1970.