Graduation

John Temple relaxes with students in Dean Paul Voakes' office prior to his commencement address. (Photo by Kasia Broussalian)

Rocky Mountain News Editor, President and Publisher John Temple, who also serves on the SJMC Advisory Board, delivered the School's spring 2008 commencement address May 8 in Macky Auditorium.

Some of his advice to graduates included the following comments. They seem prophetic in light of the Dec. 4 announcement by Rocky owner E.W Scripps that it was for sale, prompting speculation that Colorado's oldest newspaper would close.

• "We've moved from an era of great companies and corporations dominating the landscape to an era where power is shifting to the creative and talented individual, just as power is shifting to the individual consumer. Today's media companies need you more than you may need them."

• "I'd encourage you to focus in the years to come not on what organization you will join but what you will do with yourself. Embrace opportunity. Be unafraid to try things. Push yourself to do what you didn't think was possible. Not taking your best shot, not trying, that's the worst thing. Remember, you are your most important product. But you can only become the person you want to be by pushing yourself to reach your dreams. I hope that will be a person who cares about others, who cares about the stories of others."

• "Today the most important thing you can carry forth from this place is not mastery of a current computer program or a stylebook. It's curiosity, the willingness to learn, the desire for knowledge. Of one thing you can be sure: Whatever you'll be doing when you leave here will change over the course of your working life. As will the tools you use."

• "In the days when a single video camera cost more than $100,000, graduates didn't have many choices. They went to work for those who could buy the cameras. Today we live in a pro-sumer world. You can produce fantastic quality video with a camera that costs less than a 30th of what TV stations used to pay."

• "Picasso is famously said to have said of computers that they are useless. Why? Because they can only give you answers. Whether he said that or not, there's an important truth in those words for you today. The ability you carry forth as graduates is the ability to ask questions, the desire to ask questions. Without those questions, the marvelous tools at your disposal today will produce nothing of value. With them, the sky is the limit."

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