Photo by Nathan Morgan/Western Kentucky University

The only thing that could be better than celebrating 25 years of doing something you love is celebrating it with someone you love. Since 1982, I have been the photo director for the Western Kentucky University Minority Journalism Workshop. The workshop ended last Thursday and as usual, I bring home lots of memories of working with eager high school students. This year the memories are even more special. My son, Andrew, attended the workshop this year and because of that, it was the first Father’s Day we have been together since he was born 17 years ago.

I grew up without a father. He passed away when I was about 5 and I have only a few memories of him. I grew up not celebrating Father’s Day with my dad and always wanted to be there for my son someday.

On January 28, 1991, Andrew was born. Six months later my passion for my craft called and for his first Father’s Day I was away dealing with other people’s kids. It didn’t hurt as much that I was gone until he started getting older and understood the holiday. As long as he can remember, he has watched me pack and leave every June for two weeks to go teach photojournalism to sophomores, juniors and seniors from around the country. He would always call me in Bowling Green, Ky. to wish me Happy Father’s Day, a call I always looked forward to in my dorm.

I’ve never pushed my career on him because I wanted him to develop his own passion. He’s been shooing video and taking pictures on his own and for school since last summer. He will be a senior at Francis Howell North in St. Charles County, where he will be the Podcast Editor for the school’s online publication the NorthStar. He said, “Next year, I want to go to your workshop with you!” I kept my emotions to myself, but inside I was bursting with glee. So I filed that thought away until earlier this year.

At the end of the workshop banquet, Pam Johnson, director of WKU’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting, surprised the three directors and two former workshoppers turned staffers, with banners and special recognition. Having Andrew there to share that with me was priceless.

The other editors asked him to do a surprise opinion piece for the workshop paper on what it meant to him. You can read Andrew’s piece here.
After reading his piece, all the guilt faded away.

Teaching this workshop is one of the most important things in my life. I’ve made life-long friendships with some of the former students who are now working as journalists, such as Post-Dispatch photographer Dawn Majors, a 1991 workshop alumni; Washington Post Political Reporter Nikita Stewart, who attended from 1987 through 1989; and Darla Carter, Health and Fitness reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, who attended in 1985.

The workshop began in the 1982 as the Urban Journalism Workshop. The name was changed to the Western Kentucky University/Dow Jones Minority Journalism Workshop in the ’90s and two years ago changed to Xposure.

Workshops such as this one popped up all over the country about 25 years ago because of the need to get more people of color in our nation’s newsrooms. It’s a good feeling to know I’ve had a very small role in the students’ lives. Even though workshops like ours are working hard to recruit minorities to pursue journalism as a career, the industry is still not where it should be. According to studies, minorities only make up about 12-13 percent of our nations newsrooms and more than 40 percent of newsrooms have no minorities working in them at all.

The other workshop staffers and I estimate that 400 students have attended the workshops over the past 25 years. Each year more and more stop in to say hi and come back to help in some way. Now at least one of the workshoppers and I will be touch for the rest of our lives.