The Battalion
Viewpoint
August 13, IS
Slouch By Jim Earle
“Since this is dead week, and since tests are not supposed to
be given, it should not overload if I'm the only one who gives a
test!“
Interns don’t use stethoscopes
By PATRICIA McCORMACK
United Press International
Not all interns pack stethoscopes and
wear white coats.
Thirteen from across the country
scrambling around New York City tote re
porter’s notebooks, tape recorders, and
other trappings of broadcast media types.
The “broadcast” interns are shadowing
or working at the elbows of pros in the
network radio and television industry. That
includes association with more than those
“airing” news reports and such.
Stephen Labunski, executive director of
the International Radio & Television Socie
ty, said some interns in summer program
funded by the IRT Foundation also learn
about network sales and advertising agen
cies — conduit for television and radio com
mercials.
The IRTS is a nonprofit membership
organization for broadcasting professionals
and emphasizes education about the indus
try as its major role.
The happiest broadcast intern of all in
this sixth annual batch — picked from 610
applicants — has got to be David Gibson of
Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash. He
goes on the payroll at NBC Radio Network
when the intern program program ends
Aug. 21.
Some others getting the on-the-job ex
perience will go back to school. Still others,
their experience files enriched, will hit the
job trail.
“This is a unique opportunity for stu
dents to receive on-the-job experience at
top communications companies in the cen
ter of the broadcasting-advertising indus
try,” said Labunski, a 25-year broadcast vet
and once NBC Radio division prexy.
Susan Sigur, from California State Uni
versity in Fullerton, an intern With Inde
pendent Network News and working out of
WPIX-TV in Manhattan, said the experi
ence is fantastic.
“There’s no way anything in the clas
sroom can compare to this,” she said.
“I cannot believe there are so many de
partments and so many people working
together to put out a news show. I’m right
in the thick of it. We have everything. The
human nature breakdowns when tempers
flare and technology breakdowns when
equipment fails.
“The teamwork required is pheno
menal.”
The summer internship program is the
second of a two-prong IRTS program link
ing academia and the world of broadcast.
The first part each year is a Faculty-
Industry seminar for teachers and 25 stu
dents from universities and colleges nation
wide. The 13 interns are picked from the
25.
The core of the seminar was a game plan.
Participants worked out problems for a
hypothetical broadcast station attempting
to serve its community with honor and pro
fit, said Trisha Curran, a broadcast profes
sor from Fordham University,
“But it is not automatic, nor is it easy, as
the professors discovered in their increas-
ingly-less-cavalier attempts to bring in in
teresting, intelligent, in-depth news and
public affairs programs,” she said.
“As the student-professors evaluated
themselves as programmers they gained a
new security in their knowledge and under
standing of the braodcasting world.”
And that’s as planned. Labj
purpose of IRTS Faculty-Industnij
is “to bridge the academic andf
gap between the communicationii|
and the communications faculty!
Some seminar and intern]
ties give participants exposure 1
houses in the broadcast industry.
Don Hewitt, executive pn
Minutes, ” for example, was as
cheon speaker.
He told how the program!
how correspondents are chosen,»
views on news-as-entertainment. |
During the question and ansi
Hewitt said Barbara Walters i
best woman journalist for the sin
that she’s not available.”
One day a week the colleger
a broadcast industry giant.
They said the time with JamesCl
field, president of CBS Televisionf
president of the IRTS, ahardactt
Rating the earlier event, the!
lege Conference in Glen Cove, I
Thomas, of John Brown UniveidJ
sas, said it was “the most valuable!
centrated learning experience!la
had. ”
Labunski said in broadcast, as|
other fields, there are more)
j° bs - fis “d
But the sales part is full ofoppc^j
for good candidates — those with
ment and stamina.” H|i]y j
He is puzzled over something says 8ev
years few seminar or intern prognmst.
cipants express interest in hvobipSorn
fields: soap opera writing and spor ?M r ? dhj
irecord
ai
Former Republican
chairman praised
WASHINGTON — What Bill Brock said
about Ray C. Bliss, in commenting on the
death last week of his distinguished prede
cessor as chairman of the Republican Na
tional Committee, was the literal truth:
“Our present success is due in large mea
sure to his devotion and continuing leader
ship.”
There are few national party chairmen
who put their marks on histroy. For Repub
licans, they run in an alliterative tradition:
Mark Hanna to Will Hays to Len Hall, and,
more recently, from Bliss to Brock. Of the
five, Hanna and Bliss were probably the
great innovators, on whose work the others
built.
It was Hanna who showed the Republi
cans how to organize business and industry
as a source of major campaign funds, an art
they have never lost. It was Bliss, 70 years
later, who welded onto that financial base
the mass of small direct-mail contributions
and showed how the money could be sens
ibly spent to build local organizations,
guide campaigns through scientific polls
and use mass-media to shape the party
image.
Brock, now the U. S. special trade repre
sentative, has received deserved praise for
bringing all those elements to a high pitch
of readiness in 1980 and making an im
mense contribution to the best Election
Day for Republicans in a generation.
But what Brock said about Bliss was true:
The seeds were planted then. And if it had
not been for the folly and arrogance of the
Nixon administration, they might have
born fruit much earlier.
Those who know the Republican Nation
al Committee only as the affluent, well-
staffed organization it is today cannot belive
what a feeble thing it was 16 years ago when
Bliss came in from Columbus, where he
had been Ohio Republican chairman for 16
years before that. He arrived in the wake of
the Goldwater debacle at a time when the
RNC was, in his phrase, “a second-rate
answering service.”
He took over a party demoralized by de
feat and split down the middle by the
mutual recriminations of the Goldwater
and Rockefeller wings. Rather than duck
those divisions, Bliss pulled the antagonists
— and all the other major figures in the
party hierarchy — together in a policy
veheicle called the Republican Coordinat
ing Committee. Over the next four years
that committee developed and publicized
such innovative notions as federal revenue
sharing. But its great function was to ease
the personal feuds and persuade the public
that Republicans could agree on a positive
agenda for the future.
Bliss’s personal passion was training; it
was no accident he married a school
teacher. There were endless rounds of
workshops for city, county and state chair
men on the nuts-and-bolts of politics. Use
of polls, computers, TV, direct-mail in cam
paigns at all levels, is routine now; it was not
then, and it was Bliss, more than anyuone
eke, who orgainzed the teaching process.
To read the clips on Bliss is to rediscover
the origins of the modern muscle of the
Republican Party:
Is the GOP the party of ideas today? In
September, 1965, Bliss met with 239 poli
cial scientists “to discuss ways of attracting
more professors to the Republican Party.”
Is its Capitol Hill headquarters the only
permanent home an American political
party ever had? In January, 1966, Bliss
appointed a committee to find such a
home.
Does money pour in with every mail-
delivery, as the result of a small-donor, di
rect-mail program that make the Demo
crats green with envy? In January, 1966,
Bliss had his finance chairman, retired
Gen, Lucius D. Clay, announce they would
mail more than 10 million letters asking for
money. They raised half their $7.1 million
budget from $10 contributions that year.
I remember talking to Bliss at the time,
and his personal bitterness was less than his
professional disappointment that the pieces
he belived were in place for Republican
capture of Congress in 1970 would now
probably not be carefully assembled.
Events proved him right.
But I also have a happier memory of that
period in early 1969, when he was awaiting
the formalities of the purge. He and his
wife, Ellen, came to a big party in a repor
ter’s home, where there were probably
more Democratic officials than Republi
cans. But Bliss was the lion of the evening.
The Democrats he had just helped turn
out of power surrounded him and praised
his craftsmanship, while marveling that
Nixon would so cavalierly discard such an
asset. Bliss had been a partisan Republican
from his election as precinct captain in
Akron in 1932; he would remain one until
his retirement from the Republican Nation
al Committee last year and his death last
week.
But he was a hero that night, even to the
Democrats, because he was much more
than a partisan. He was a pro.
the small society
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In England, they’d
have to call it petro-ale
By DICK WfeST
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The great Conoco mer
ger fight, perhaps the most intensive strug
gle since “Rocky II,” appears to have ended
in a felicitous arrangement.
Conoco, the oil heavyweight, is being
taken over by Du Pont, the chemical
heavyweight, with Seagram, the liquor
heavyweight, getting 20 percent of the
stock.
“But at the rate consumption is increas
ing, particularly with large amounts being
diverted to filling stations, how long can our
farmers continue to meet the demand?
“Suppose the Russians were to buy up
most of the world’s barley crop. Or suppose
we had an invasion of Mediterranean barley
flies similar to the medfly infestation of
Californian fruit. Then where would we
be?”
That combination seemingly bodes well
for America’s energy needs — and possibly
her drinking needs as well.
One of the more promising alternative
fuels is gasohol, a mixture of gasoline, a
Conoco speciality, and alcohol, a Seagram
specialty. Under the new setup, Du Font’s
specialty can now be devoted to chemically
improving the hybrid, a boon for us all.
Or, failing that, maybe Du Pont chem
ists can come up with alcoline, a gasoline-
alcohol mixture one puts in one’s stomach
rather than into the fuel tank of one’s auto
mobile.
Many serious drinkers in this country
have been warning that the United States is
becoming too dependent on grain as the
basis for spirituous beverages.
Some of the deep thinkers at the Blue
Mirror II, a local sequel to Bassin’s, the
late, lamented discussion center, were talk
ing about the prospects the other evening
when I dropped in to use the telephone.
“It is true America is currently self-
sufficient in barley, corn, rye and other am
ber waves of grain used in the production of
alcohol,” Anderson was saying.
Burnett nodded thoughtfully. “I can see
America becoming dependent on imported
beer. Imagine what that would do to the
economy.
“We’ve got enough problems from the
Volkswagen without having German
breweries take over the market. And what if
the Japanese started flooding the country
with rice beer along with Toyotas and Dat-
suns?”
Everyone ordered another round while
they contemplated that grim outlook.
What seemed like the most logical reme
dial action was suggested by a theoretician
who identified himself both as Wiessler and
Weissler, apparently a name with inter
changeable diphthongs.
“Petroleum-based beer — that’s the
answer,” he cried.
“The world has an oil glut at the mo
ment. If someone developed a method of
converting surplus petroleum into beer, it
would greatly reduce the risk of America
becoming dependent on imported suds. ”
It was later that evening that the concept
of alcoline came to me.
OK, Du Pont-Seagram-Conoco (Dug-
ramco?) — the ball is in your court. Let’s
have a sixpack of Old OPEC.
prist
The Battaliov ^Udidat
itudv b'
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