The man who prepared me for a life covering the news…

Entering journalism school in the early 2000's was a very confusing time. The Internet had finally gained enough momentum to shift the way we were communicating, and it was impossible to go a day without having some news dinosaur or university counselor audibly advise against going down this career path. It was always “newspapers are dying” or “hard to make money as a journalist.”

Even though I started my career in journalism at the ripe age of 15, having already decided that would be the only job I could ever really give myself over to, there were times midway through college that I doubted whether or not to keep at it. This was also about the time that online news sites started popping up… and then aggregators… but the job outlook for the newspaper business only got more depressing.

But then I met Kent Flanagan, seasoned reporter, editor, and the textbook definition of a veteran news man with decades of experience as an AP bureau chief. It was his first year teaching at MTSU under the title of “Journalist in Residence,” and the thing I remember most is how he never really tried to sell me — or any of the other students in that class—on entering the field of journalism. He didn’t give us lectures on the way the old news business operated. But what he did do is treat me like an actually fucking journalist for the first time in my entire life.

“My name is Kent, not Professor Flanagan. You are all reporters… colleagues… and when you’re out in the field I expect you to act like it,” I recall him saying. “Don’t introduce yourself as a student, or a student journalist. You’re a journalist. That’s it.”

I remember him saying this because Kent wasn’t the type to get on a soapbox to preach his version of the good word, not when it came to teaching, or at least not when teaching me. This was a rare exception in my experience. You had to know the man before you could really start to understand the advice he was offering. This led to several of my fellow students writing him off as “worthless” or “useless.” I couldn’t disagree more with that assessment, now more than ever.

Today I learned that Kent passed away. He was 69. His legacy will live on through all the lives he touched, and all the people like myself he inspired to pursue a life in the news business. If you didn’t know him, or didn’t spend enough time paying attention to the wisdom he was offering, I’ll briefly attempt to shed some light on what he taught me…

***

The first thing Kent taught me I’ve already shared: stop acting like what you want to be, and just be. A piece of paper handed to you after four years at a university doesn’t automatically flip on a switch to make you a journalist. Being a journalist makes you a journalist. And over a decade ago, that was harder to conceive. Newspapers were seeing record turnover, online news was slowly dismantling the news industry’s business model, and good luck trying to find an internship that actually paid, thus limited the opportunities for an aspiring reporter to see his or her name in print. (This was also before blogging was legitimized enough to have J-school professors advocating for it to be added to the curriculum.) To some, this probably made the journey to becoming a “real” reporter much longer, or seemingly impossible.

The point I’m trying to make is that Kent was able to cut through all of that. Suddenly, I didn’t really need journalism school. I just needed to do some journalism, and Kent was all too happy to help make that happen. Many times I’ve come back to this advice. The first time was when I quit my job as (what was essentially) sports editor of the local paper. The last time I recalled that advice was just a few weeks ago before accepting my current job at the DailyDot.

***

“It’ll be interesting to see how you manage your time,” Kent once said to me after going through an exhaustive list of tasks to complete as newly minted news editor of our collegiate student newspaper. I thought I was going to lose my mind, and couldn’t really fathom how I’d get everything done that I was trying to do. And for the record, I was doing so so so so much wrong in that position. I became a control freak, because control gives you the illusion that you can eventually master a difficult task no matter the undertaking. Kent never said a word. Instead, he just replied with the words above and shuffled off to his next class.

At the time, I could have never imagined that the entire news industry would one day become even more hyper obsessed with publishing news faster than the Associated Press. How the hell do you even manage anything when you never stop moving?

Well, that’s a good question, and one I still don’t have an answer for. It is, however, “interesting” because eventually in this business you do figure out how to manage your time enough to get the job done. At best, I’ve come to realize that asking that question is enough to get me on the right track.

***

And then there was the lesson Kent taught me way back in college that stuck with me the longest, something I still replay in my mind on a near daily basis: what you can do, and what you perceive you can do are two very different things.

It’s a dangerous piece of knowledge, knowing that your mind is usually the only thing holding you back from achieving the things you want to do. Having someone tell you this directly, well, I wouldn’t expect it would be very convincing. What most people want is so far out of scope from where they currently are that it doesn’t translate.

Kent would always ask me what I’m working on, and sometimes I’d half-complain while explaining a very cumbersome or grueling task related to producing the news.

I remember the last time he asked me, which was just before inviting me to speak to his new Reporting class after I’d graduated. At that time I was no longer a full-time reporter, but desperately trying to break back in as a freelancer or contributor to websites I admired. Most frequently I would spend the hours of 9 to 5 working a fairly mundane day job, followed by forcing myself to write articles I was actually proud of from 5 a.m. to whenever the sun came up. It was exhausting and unsustainable, I remember thinking. And there was only so much I could do.

“Ah. Well. You know that’s just an illusion,” he said, or some version of those words. “You can do more. You can always do more.”

He’s right, of course. Any inspirational startup founder will reiterate this in a thousand different ways. Took me a while (by that I mean pretty much all of my 20's) to realize why he subtly pushed the importance of time management, but at least I get it now.

Kent is gone now, but the impact he had on this world is nothing to ignore. And since I can’t really think of a good way to end a piece like this, I’ll just say goodbye to my friend and mentor — leaving below the introduction article to a project he launched while I was under his guidance at MTSU.