Use the fields below to perform an advanced search of jhunewsletter.com - The Johns Hopkins News-Letter's archives. This will return articles, images, and multimedia relevant to your query.
27 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
When I first went to work at The News-Letter in September 1965, its office was on the ground floor of the Merrick Barn. It wasn’t until 1966 that co-editors Caleb Deschanel and Jim Freedman, both members of the Class of ’66, moved it to the Gatehouse — which was brilliant. I don’t know how they managed it, but the Gatehouse was — and still is — the perfect headquarters for the paper.
Greetings, quizlings! After 25+ years of dormancy, The Quizmaster has once again re-emerged into the sunlight to delight and annoy you! Like some kind of defective cicada, only with less flying into your face. In honor of The News-Letter’s 125th anniversary, this issue’s quiz is about people connected to Hopkins who were well-known journalists and/or authors.
Attending Hopkins was among the most important experiences of my life. For the first time, away from the protective — and irresistible — constrictions of my family, I took myself and the world seriously; I worked hard and nearly up to my potential; I met new people and learned new things; I was advised by intelligent and caring friends and teachers, who, unlike family members, were not obligated but had chosen to take an interest in me and my welfare; and I made decisions about my future — decisions that I have certainly questioned on occasion, but from which I have never significantly deviated.
This year, as I do every year, I filled out my NCAA basketball bracket. Like most years, I did not do very well. My wife kicked my butt (again, like most years), and I barely beat my 10-year-old son. The one thing that saved me from finishing last was my faith in the University of Southern California (USC). I had them in the Final Eight, and that’s exactly where their run ended when they lost to Gonzaga. I really knew nothing about them and had not seen them play all year. I picked them for one reason: Andy Enfield.
We began our love of good beer at Hopkins, back in the early ‘90s. In human terms, that was a generation ago — we each have kids and stepkids of our own attending and looking to attend college. In beer terms, eons have passed. The nascent microbrewery scene has blossomed locally in Baltimore and far and wide across the country into a varied world of brewpubs, craft breweries and highly specialized nano-breweries. Heck, some of our favorite independent breweries are no longer that, as they have been purchased by other breweries or even some of the multinational breweries. Our 30-year journey has been quite the trip.
Okay, I’ll admit it — like many college students, I was partially in it for the free food.
Being a part of The News-Letter, as a contributing underclassman all the way through to being Editor-in-Chief, was a singular piece of my Hopkins experience. It ranks with having graduated as a working engineer for the Federal Aviation Agency.
I walked into the Gatehouse during orientation of what was my sophomore year in 1978 and immediately fell in love. I was a Hopkins legacy but a transfer, having spent a year in an experimental high-school-to-college program at the University of Delaware. I had a desire to write. I had been an editor at my high school paper at Wesley College where the Delaware program was housed, and I had even been a sports stringer for Dover Post, a local paper founded only a few years before.
Not long after the middle of the last century, I became an undergraduate at Hopkins. I had received a rigorous but rather unexciting preparation at Baltimore City College, after which Hopkins felt like an awakening. The courses, of course, provided much of the stimulation, but there was an extracurricular electricity too. It became evident one morning in my freshman year as I walked across the Upper Quadrangle. I looked up and saw that someone had decorated the Gilman Hall clock with a beautifully executed Mickey Mouse face.
My fondest memories of college are related to my time at The News-Letter. I had been an editor of my high school paper in Brooklyn, N.Y. that was released only six times per year. I already knew that I wanted to continue to write for my college paper, and then when I decided to go to Hopkins, the excitement grew, as I had been an avid reader of Russell Baker in the New York Times, and I knew of his Hopkins days.
During our senior year as undergraduates at Hopkins from 1959 to 1960, my News-Letter co-editor Stanley Handmaker and I, as well as our entire staff, did our best to call attention to several "major" issues of the day as we saw it.
I cannot remember a time in my life without newspapers. My parents always had them in the house, and my sisters and I would try to find the hidden Nina’s in Al Hirschfeld’s inimitable drawings. My first job, or at least my first real job where I did not work for my parents, was at Frate’s News Store in my hometown. I had to get there at 5 a.m. every Sunday to assemble the New York Times; back then, the paper was shipped in sections to be collated by kids like me at each store. This was three hours of intense shuffling, hands covered in ink, $5 in my pocket and a new pack of gum for the bike ride home.
My recollections of The News-Letter reach back more than 70 years to when I joined the staff as a reporter in the fall of 1949, my freshman year at Hopkins. I had been editor of my high school newspaper and had worked a couple of summers as a copy boy at the Courier-Post, a newspaper in Camden, N.J. So I was anxious to work for The News-Letter.
The News-Letter had a very different and more important role during my years, 1953 to 1957, on the Homewood Campus.
Hello. I’m Eric Goodman — Hopkins Class of 2011. I worked on The News-Letter from 2007-2010, the first year as a Sports section staff writer and the last two years as a Sports Editor. Since graduating from Hopkins, I have worked in consulting in D.C. and New York, got an MBA at New York University and now work and live in Seattle with my wife who also went to Hopkins (Class of 2013).
In the fall of 1969, I was in front of Shriver Hall heading for sophomore-year registration when I noticed a tall, shaggy-haired guy approaching.
As a precocious kid growing up in the ‘50s, I was a daily New York Times reader and avidly followed the ups and downs of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the early ‘60s, I chaired a student World Affairs Council in high school and dreamed about becoming secretary of state.
I joined The News-Letter as a freshman in 1964. One of my assigned tasks, in addition to turning out profound, satirical, highly principled journalistic gems, involved going to our printing plant on Thursday evenings to proofread, an odious task reserved for rookies.
I still walk past the Gatehouse sometimes, 20 years later. Its arched windows and vestigial chimney still stand sentinel over the students who pass through its gently creaking doors, clicking their words onto screens late into the night. The sameness is somehow comforting.
The News-Letter emailed over 800 alumni to ask if they would be interested in contributing to this magazine issue. Many responded to simply say yes, they would, but David Hawk went above and beyond and replied with a 1350-word reflection about his time at the paper — before we even asked him to write anything! What follows is his email to us, edited only for length and clarity, to preserve its enthusiasm, thoughtfulness and beautifully impromptu nature.