Former CEO of Associated Press, Independent
John Curley - Journalism Education
About Tom Curley
Tom Curley, former president and CEO of the Associated Press, has been inducted into the New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame. During his induction speech, he recounted his career in auto racing, including his work as a technical expert for CBS at the Daytona 500, his role in forming the American Canadian Tour (ACT) and the Stock Car Connection, and the creation of a crate motor program with General Motors in 1999 to control costs in weekly racing. He also shared a personal anecdote about being punched by AJ Foyt while working as a photographer. Curley has also spoken about press freedom and the challenges facing journalism. He has criticized government secrecy post-9/11, stating that "the government is pushing hard for secrecy" and that journalists must "push back equally hard for openness." He has advocated for a focused lobbying effort for open government and has discussed the case of AP photographer Bilal Hussein, who was held without charges, calling it a clash between people and their access to information. Curley has also addressed the digital transformation of news, noting that by 2012, 250 million consumers would have touchscreen devices, and emphasized that while technology changes how journalists work, it does not change what they do. He has described the journalist as increasingly being targeted in conflict zones and political campaigns.
Transcript (24 segments)
I
Interviewer0:05
And why'd you decide to go to Columbia?
T
Tom Curley0:08
Columbia was said to be the best school in the country for journalism at the Master's level, and I was in New York besides, and I like New York. And basically, I also got a full scholarship.
I
Interviewer0:21
But you know, you were already, you know, up and running in a way in terms of your journalism career. You probably could have just kept going.
T
Tom Curley0:29
Oh yeah, I didn't need to do that. I kept working while I was in school. I worked nights for AP, so I left nothing on the table in terms of experience. I just kept going, and some weeks it would be four nights instead of five, others it might be three depending on what was going on at Columbia. But yeah, I just stayed with it. But I thought I would teach one day because my parents both taught, and I thought a master's degree would be desirable.
I
Interviewer0:57
So that's why they hired you here.
T
Tom Curley0:59
Right.
I
Interviewer1:02
And now...
T
Tom Curley1:04
But in the long-term scheme of things, I thought that might work.
I
Interviewer1:08
So we're talking about the early 60s at Columbia. And so one of the things I'm really curious about is to what extent did they talk about ethics as part of the journalism curriculum? Or it probably wasn't a standalone course in ethics, but how was it built into things at all? To what extent?
T
Tom Curley1:29
It wasn't built into the extent that it's built in today, and I think it's been an evolving thing. Because the old-time reporters, and I'll say particularly in New York because there were probably six and eight papers at one time, went back and forth and had newspaper wars that probably tested the ethics of some of the people at those papers. But there was a textbook we had by John Hohenberg, who was a major figure in the field and the Pulitzer Prize committee secretary, and who I also had for several courses. And John had a lot of thoughts on the fact that the professional journalist is ethical, does the right thing all the time, has high standards, and is expected to maintain those standards. And we didn't have a lot of issues to talk about. There wasn't a lot that was going on in terms of ethical problems that came to light. There was only one that I can recall, and that the old Brooklyn Eagle, which was Brooklyn's newspaper, had been revived the year that we were in school. And it died and been revived, and one day there was a headline, a front-page headline, major headline, 72-point, that said 'Death Threat Bared to Union Leader.' When you read the story, somebody was quoted as saying, 'Sit down, you idiot, or you'll have a heart attack.' And we all thought that was a little, even for a paper trying to be rehabilitated, that went way too far.
I
Interviewer3:04
Oh, that's pretty funny. But that's the only one I remember from that era particularly.
T
Tom Curley3:07
Yeah.
I
Interviewer3:10
So, you know, if he was calling on journalists to be ethical and maintain standards, like, but I mean, how do you know what that means? I mean, how do you know what the standards are and what it means to be...
T
Tom Curley3:22
I think the assumption was you would know that you should do everything that made sense and was right in the context of times. And they did talk about things like that. You know, when you handed in stories, you had to have the context and so on. And we had people from The New York Times and Herald Tribune who were on the staff, and of course, they edited the copy, and you know, we got to talk to them about some of the things going on. But there were no major problems in New York that year that came to light as a result of ethical situations. I might hasten to add that was a newspaper strike too. As a result, many days that year were without newspapers. It was one of those trying to get the printers to agree to better terms so that they wouldn't have to have bogus typeset, but that took a long time to resolve.
I
Interviewer4:15
I mean, do you think the expectation was that people would just kind of inhale, you know, the sense of journalism standards and ethical standards just by being in the newsroom and being around professionals? That you didn't really need to talk about it and explain it?
T
Tom Curley4:27
I would say probably just because it was the era and most people thought that that was the thing to do. I can't deal with the thinking of Columbia, but I don't think they were pushed to go into that particular field because there were no issues on the table to deal with.
I
Interviewer4:49
So why do you think, in terms of the education of journalists, why do you think that has now become an important... what's changed?
T
Tom Curley4:56
To be honest with you, I think some of it became fashionable just because a school could get a leg up on another school. I also think that there were enough cases building over the years that you could have case studies. And I think that people became more serious about maintaining standards. You see books on the subject. The Freedom Forum put one out on principles of ethical coverage, but Robert Heyman, who had been the editor of the St. Petersburg newspaper, was the author of that. And there's just been more efforts to do work like that.
I
Interviewer5:33
So I don't get the sense that you think that in the days before formal training in ethics, you know, journalism was some kind of cesspool of shady activity and that finally people reached the point where we said, 'Hey, we better get our house in order and start training.'
T
Tom Curley5:50
I don't know. I didn't get that sense. But I worked in small, mid-sized markets, and while I worked in New York and for the Associated Press, I didn't come across situations that came up that looked like there was something going on.
I
Interviewer6:13
Well, were there young guys coming into the business, you know, in the 1960s who had a much more activist and sort of anti-establishment streak? And that there was a sort of cultural shift from the old guard that might have been more go-along, get-along with the power structure?
T
Tom Curley6:31
There probably were after the Woodward-Bernstein situation, but it probably had more to do with the fact that the universities were probably ramping up their programs with investigative reporting and lots more how-to-do-it with records and things like that. And I suspect that triggered the information base of new reporters getting higher.
I
Interviewer6:55
So just to jump back to Columbia, so how valuable was that experience for you anyway in terms of what you learned there as opposed to what you would have learned if you just stayed, you know, working on the streets?
T
Tom Curley7:06
Well, I was working on the streets. See, because the reason I went to Columbia was because I didn't have to give that up. And if it was a call between one or the other, I would not have given up the Associated Press. So I would rate it neutral. I got the degree, I met a lot of people who were sharp in the industry, I met a lot of people who were good at Columbia, as in students. And it was a good experience, but realistically, I wasn't going to trade one for the other.