If you ask veteran television journalist Ed Dague '65, today's cub reporters seldom receive the right kind of education. In fact, he says, most would profit from a college preparation more like that Dague received--as an engineering major at Rensselaer.
He speaks from experience. He has been in the field of broadcast news for 20 years,and is the managing editor and news anchor at WNYT-TV, channel 13, in Albany.
``I've said for a long time that an RPI engineering education is about the best kind of preparation a journalist can receive," Dague says. ``It's the problem-solving. It's being drilled over four years there to look at extremely complex problems and figure out what is really the heart of things--how to throw out all the irrelevant factors."From his cramped office in a corner of the WNYT newsroom, Dague reflects on his years at Rensselaer and their impact on his career. Beyond a few momentos in his office--a photo of former hockey star Adam Oates scoring a goal in a championship game , and a poster of the Brooklyn Bridge--Dague says he is routinely reminded of the unusual preperation for journalism he received at RPI.``That's where the news stories are. There arn't two sides; there are 18. It's like 18 simultaneous equations. If you can get it down to one, you can report the story."
His career, he says, was influenced by two national traumas. If the [then] Soviet Union had not launched Sputnik I, he might not have enrolled at Rensselaer. And if Robert Kennedy had not been assassinated, he might never have become a journalist.
``When the Russians launched Sputnik,' Dague recalls, ``this country went berserk. In my school (in Buffalo), 13 of us in the eighth grade were suddenly bumped up a year in math and science. I always knew I'd study engineering."He chose Rensselaer ``because it was the closest and best school in engineering. I never really considered any other."
He finished his first year academically in the top quarter of his class, but his interest in engineering fell, and so, inevitably, did his grades. ``It was all downhill from there," Dague says.
``At the end of my junior year I withdrew from RPI and looked for a job,' recalls Dague. That took him to a small radio station in Indiana.``Small stations need someone who can leagally tune the transmitter and know what they're doing as well as go on the air,' Dauge says. ``After three years of electrical engineering, the Federal Communications Commission's first-class radio-telephone test wasn't too tough, and I had had a lot of on-air time at WRPI." (His license, renewed regularly and framed, also hangs on his wall in his WNYT office.)
Dague did not stay in Indiana. After a year of hosting an afternoon music program, he left and returned to Rensselaer.
In Dague's senior year year, Rensselaer offered him another opportunity he considered priceless: a job at WHAZ, then a daytime-only classical music station broadcasting from the top floor of the Russell Sage Laboratory building. Dague worked there as ``program director, chief engineer, record librarian, janitor, you name it," he says. ``You could not gain all that experience if you went to a journalism school. Who's going to let you on the air for hours on end?"
An occasionally tumultuous radio career in the Capital District began even before Dague left RPI. He first took an all-night disc jockey job in Albany. Then he added a daytime job as a technician with television station WTEN, channel 10.
He made the move to journalism the night Robert Kennedy was shot. At tht time, he was on an all-night stint as disc jockey with an Albany ``top 40" station.
``When the news came in," Dague says, ``I dropped the format and went all news. I called the news department, and we were going great. Then the program director called and and told me to play the music. I told him, `I cannot play ``Yummy, Yummy, Yummy, I've Got Love in My Tummy" with the senator from New York dying in California.' I'm not really sure whether I quit or was fired. But I knew I was gone." The next day a rival Albany station hired him as news director.
Although he speaks highly of his news staff, Dague wishes the preparation for would-be journalists included elements of a traditional Rensselaer engineering education.
``The journalism and communications schools are producing some pretty good writers who don't understand how things work," Dague contends.``The technology they're using largly mystifies them, and they arn't sufficiently skeptical."
``Maybe some of what comes out of RPI is skepticism. You learn to doubt data and search for all the factors in a function. There is sort of rational objectivity associated with science that can really help a reporter. Journalism schools don't teach that. They teach writing skills, `inverted-pyramid' writing style, and the history of journalism."
Now Dague finds that his job requires him to view RPI with the same kind of skepticism and objectivity that he learned on the campus.
``Rensselaer is a big story in the Capital District. It is a big employer and an important resource. The whole area has a tie to RPI's future. The Center for Industrial Innovation, the Rensselaer Technology Park, and the incubator center may be the region's best hope for future employment."
``I spent four intense years at Rensselaer. I didn't enjoy being there a whole lot of the time, but I had trouble leaving. I've stayed close enough to RPI to develop a lasting empathy for the people there and to hear much more about the internal workings than any other reporter would ever be told."
Comments? john@hibp.ecse.rpi.edu
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