By Samuel Rubenfeld
Robert Greene’s impact on journalism was not just felt during his long career at Newsday. While a professor at the University, his primary responsibility was creating and building the print journalism program in the newly inaugurated School of Communication in 1995, and he took this responsibility seriously.
Greene worked at the University from 1995 through 2002, during which he taught Advanced News Writing throughout his University career, and he taught Investigative and In-Depth Reporting every Spring from 1997 through 2002.
“He was a masterful teacher who could rouse fury in the meekest of students,” wrote Tom Hallissey, a student of Greene’s who is now a reporter for The Riverdale Press in the Bronx, in a letter to the editor in Newsday. “I learned practical things, but most importantly he taught me to dig and never stop digging.”
When he first started at the University, Greene was involved in the formation and writing of the curriculum of the print journalism program.
“In many ways he was a form of professional in residence,” said Barbara Kelly, the former journalism department chair, in an e-mail. “His was a very hands-on approach to teaching, practical rather than theoretical, although he was a great respecter of the intellectual roots of journalism,” Kelly said. “He prodded his students to get to the roots of their stories, and disdained modern journalists’ over-dependence on the telephone. He sent them to government records offices, to interview folks (often by surprise!) and back to records to verify their initial assumptions.”
Current journalism professor Carol Fletcher said he challenged his students. “When he taught JRNL 13 [Advanced News Writing], it was the toughest course in the curriculum,” she said in an e-mail message. “Students entered as students and left as reporters. Then they wore their ‘I survived JRNL 13 t-shirts’ proudly.”
Christine Sampson, 26, who graduated in 2002 and is now the assistant production editor of the American Institute of Physics, remembered her experience with Greene fondly, writing in an e-mail message that “Even the name of the class was ominous: ‘JRNL 13.'” “That unlucky-for-some number 13 was supposed to be the hardest class of your freshman year… When you passed Greene’s JRNL 13 class, you got a white t-shirt with a blue Hofstra logo – a lion dressed up as a reporter. To this day I wear that shirt like a trophy. But Greene’s tenacious Investigative Reporting class promptly put JRNL 13 to shame a semester or two later.”
“His amazing ability to translate his personal experiences, while in the field of journalism, into realistic, everyday skills as a reporter inspired me to push as hard as I could,” said Stefano Fasulo, who graduated in 2003 with a bachelor’s in broadcast journalism, and is now the assistant director of the Recreation Center. “I can remember vividly the passion in his eyes when he urged us to always be aware of everything around us.”
Ellen Frisina, now an associate professor of public relations here, studied journalism at the University in the 1970s, during what she called the “heyday” of investigative journalism. “Everybody who studied journalism on Long Island wanted to be Bob Greene,” she said.
After graduating from the University, Frisina did her graduate work at New York University, and then spent years working at weekly newspapers on Long Island, eventually publishing her own for two years. Greene hired her in 1998 to teach journalism full-time.
“It was the highest honor,” she said.
Greene left the University in 2002, eventually moving to Stony Brook to start their journalism program, but Kelly believes Greene would not be happy with the state of journalism today.
“I am sure that he, like so many of his generational cohorts in the field, would be disappointed in the move away from investigative journalism,” Kelly said in an e-mail message. “However… the field of journalism itself is leading the move. One only has to read the paper to see that on-going investigation is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and ‘bling’ or other forms of sensational (and marketable) stories are what is being published.”
Fletcher said Greene would support his students regardless of the circumstances. “The thing about Bob was, he had this amazing, uncompromising integrity,” she said. “He was fearless in the face of authority, and all heart when it came to the underdog. He lived all the finest principles of journalism. And he would do anything for his students.”
Sampson said she was an example of just that. “He was the kind of teacher who made you feel like every lesson was hard-earned and important, and made you love every second of learning with his narrative style of teaching,” Sampson said. “With his recommendations I won internships, interviews and eventually a job in the field within three months of graduating. A career was born – and I’m just one of the many, many young professionals he helped raise as a University professor.”
A memorial for Professor Greene will be held on May 9 on the 10th floor of Axinn library at 10 a.m.