Rachel Seymour

Jerry Seib, recipient of this year’s William Allen White Foundation Award and Wall Street Journal Washington bureau chief, spoke to the crowd at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union about the value of objectivity in journalism Friday afternoon. Seib also pointed out the need to analyze both sides of a situation or story fairly and discuss the idea more explicitly in the classrooms.

The School of Journalism honored one of its own last Friday, bringing Jerry Seib back to the school for its annual celebration of William Allen White.

Seib, now The Wall Street Journal Washington Bureau Chief, recalled memories and hot-topic issues when he was the editor of The University Daily Kansan in Fall 1977. During his years at the University he met his best friends and his future wife, Barbara Rosewicz, who served as Kansan editor in Spring 1978.

Seib received the William Allen White Foundation Award Friday afternoon at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. The award is given annually to journalists who follow in the footsteps of William Allen White, for whom the school is named.

Title IX was an issue that was fresh in the minds of Seib and Rosewicz. Title IX is the 1972 federal code that outlawed the federal funding for sports based on sex.

It was a controversial story at the time he was Kansan editor because the law was passed before he arrived at the University, but the Athletics Department and University administration were still struggling to deal with it at the end of the decade, Seib said.

There was a lot of gray area for interpretation so no one really knew how to handle the situation, he said.

While the administration tried to make sense of the law, students were eager to see results, Seib said. Women thought the Athletics Department was moving too slowly on the issue.

They felt strongly about Title IX and wanted the process to move quickly so they could receive funding for their sports, Seib said.

Rosewicz said athletics departments around the country are continuing to deal with Title IX.

“It’s still a problem,” Rosewicz said. “There are accusations that money for women sports is killing wrestling programs.”

While Seib and Rosewicz were editors, they endured a running feud with then-athletics director, Clyde Walker.

The Kansan staff speculated at the time that this feud led Walker to resign, Rosewicz said.

Walker, who was often criticized of favoring alumni dollars over students’ enjoyment, resigned the day after the final Spring issue came out, so the Kansan could not report on the situation, she said.

Walker wanted to move the KU-MU football game to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., which did not please many students, Seib said.

The Kansan editorialized the situation and the idea to move the game eventually died, Seib said.

He didn’t know what the correlation was between the death of the venue change and Kansan editorialization, but the outcome was something he said he does not regret.

Dan Bowerman, who worked with Seib for the Kansan, said the basketball team was not as good as it was now.

“The popular TV show was the ‘Gong Show’ and people wanted to gong Ted Owens,” Bowerman said. The “Gong Show” was an amateur talent show from 1976-78. If an act was horrible, judges could hit a gong at any time during the performance that ended it.

A native of Hays, Seib credits the School of Journalism for all of his accomplishments.

“I strongly suspect there has never been a recipient who appreciated this more than me,” he said during his Friday speech. “Nothing makes me prouder than to say I’m a Jayhawk journalist.”

About 250 people attended the ceremony.

Seib was the 57th journalist to win the award, which has been given since 1950. Other recipients of the award include Walter Cronkite and Cokie Roberts.