This reading will serve as an introduction of sorts to the man for whom your scholarship is named. Ernie Pyle is usually described as an alumnus of Indiana University, although he left the university in 1923 a few credits short of graduating, embarking on a career as a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist that would take him across America, and ultimately, across the world. It was through his reporting on the front lines of World War II that Ernie achieved international fame ... although he did not survive the war, dying from machine gun fire on the Japanese island of Ie Shima a few weeks before VJ Day. Our reading begins at this moment, with the Prologue to Tobin’s book, then takes us back to Ernie’s roots in the small town of Dana, Indiana.

In Ernie’s time: At the time of his death at the age of 44, Ernie Pyle was a household name, renowned for his columns chronicling the everyday lives of the common soldiers on the front lines of World War II. Tobin’s book focuses on Ernie’s wartime correspondence, though his story of emerging from the smallest of small towns remain inspiring, rising from humble beginnings to become, as this book states in the prologue, America’s eyewitness to the twentieth century’s supreme ordeal.

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In 2029, you won’t just be competing with other U.S. graduates for jobs, you’ll enter a global market pitted against equally skilled, knowledgeable graduates willing to work for a quarter of salary you deem necessary. The key is how to position yourself strategically. In this chapter, Friedman explains how to become an “untouchable,” a worker who cannot be replaced, in an increasingly outsource-hungry job market. Friedman isn’t being dour about globalization; in fact the book lauds the myriad benefits of it. But he’s a realist, and you should start applying his insights now, whether they guide the electives you sign up for or the travel experiences you seek.

In Ernie’s time: Pyle traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, South America, North Africa and Asia during his career. Before globalization ushered the music, movies and consumer products of distant cultures into our homes, most folks relied on news stories, books, movies and photography magazines like National Geographic and Life to show us what lay beyond our borders. It’s hard to fathom that dearth of “data,” but Ernie understood the fascination and often included simple details about things like food, customs and clothing. People who had never left their own home state lived vicariously through Pyle’s observations about other cultures, and, when the war started, they depended on him to tell them how soldiers were faring abroad. The world outside the United States was, indeed, very far away.

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On the surface, this reading recounts a happy scenario in which a graduating senior is being courted by a senior manager of the biggest tech companies. On a broader level, the chapter is about how quickly we make snap decisions about people’s personalities and abilities, and how research has shown how flawed those first impressions can be. Anyone pursuing media skills must be able to make accurate judgments about people, whether they are sources or clients. And good media practitioners also need to inspire trust and confidence in others, whether they are covering a story or trying to work with a client.

In Ernie’s time: One of Ernie Pyle’s strengths as a journalist was his ability to instill trust and respect from his sources. His persona was that of an unassuming Hoosier who found his sources genuinely interesting, not just people helping him meet a deadline. That was Ernie on the surface. To those who knew him well, he was far more complicated — at times anxious, petulant, angry, and at others, distant and distracted. Although Ernie maintained a polite demeanor, he also had a good “BS” detector, which helped a lot during the war. He had military officers he trusted and liked, such as Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley, while others, such as George Patton, he hated.

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This chapter outlines the two pivotal events in 2001 — 9/11 and the dot.com bust — that spurred the government and businesses’ drive to gather data on citizens. This reading provides the history behind the present data grab and the surreptitious manner in which it is gathered. Whether you work as a journalist or as a marketing or PR practitioner, you will confront online privacy issues. As a journalist, you might be asked to report on data breaches or be pressured to release sensitive data as part of an investigation in order to expose criminal activity. You might find yourself struggling with the ethical consequences of whether to release classified information, including names of government informants that might get them killed. As a PR or marketing practitioner, you might need to defend your organization in the instance of a breach that exposes medical, personal or financial data.

In Ernie’s time: During the war, Pyle had to balance his responsibility to write the truth while not revealing overly graphic details about the carnage he witnessed. He also dealt with censors who forbade him from mentioning sensitive information, such as troop locations and invasion plans. In 1944, he threatened to abandon the Cabot, the ship he had boarded in the Pacific to write about the Navy, unless he was allowed to include the full names of the people he was interviewing. Although that policy had been in force since the start of the war, Pyle’s clout forced them to relax the policy. This article is about digital privacy issues that didn’t exist in Pyle’s time, although no doubt he would be both fascinated and vexed by today’s treasure trove of online information.

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Marshall McLuhan’s provocative 1964 soundbite “The medium is the message” argued that the media form in which information is encapsulated has as much impact as the information itself. If you accept that notion, shouldn’t the Internet be the best of all worlds, offering endless amounts of images, sounds and words? Well, not necessarily. The authors of these two readings have vastly different perspectives of the Internet, but they’re probably both correct. Yes, it might be rewiring our brains, but it also offers unprecedented creative potential. As a media professional, you will spend an inordinate amount of time online. It is important to understand how that will affect you personally, and also to consider the global power of the Internet — as Shirky explains, accountability can force a more democratic system.

In Ernie’s time: Long before the World Wide Web, journalists employed other emerging technologies to reach people in new ways. Radio was in its infancy at the start of World War II but Edward R. Murrow adopted it, established his unique vocal style and was able to report directly on location for the first time. Executives dangled ridiculously lucrative radio deals in front of Pyle, too, but his insecurity over his frequent voice breaks and several bad public speaking experiences frightened him from trying radio. It’s lucky for him that in the 1940s people still got most of their news from newspapers.

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Doom-and-gloom prognostications for the journalism industry, especially for newspapers, are nothing new. Technological advances and changing public tastes and needs have indeed pushed newspaper profits way down, but a newspaper’s role in its community has not evaporated, especially, the authors argue, at a more local level. Even as existential threats continue to imperil the industry, they also present opportunities for growth. The “A.I. Boom” did not begin until the late 2010s, and only reached national prominence in the 2020s. And although A.I. summaries can undermine the integrity and accuracy of actual human reporting, the New Yorker article argues that A.I., used creatively, can actually be a benefit to journalism, particularly in its potential for investigation and research.

In Ernie’s time: Ernie Pyle began his newspaper career on the IU campus in 1920, when there were more than 2,000 daily newspapers in the United States. At the time of his death in 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close, the total number of newspapers was beginning to decline, as consolidation would mean fewer publications, though readership continued to grow, peaking in the 1970s. Since that time, however, readership of U.S. newspapers has been cut by two thirds. Why? The growth of alternative sources, first television and then the Internet, and the erosion of the business model have a lot to do with this, but the way we consume information today — and how much we might be willing to pay for it — is surely another.

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