Leaders in the fields of cable television systems, network news and television sports were among professionals who recently brought their expertise to the School's classrooms.

James Chiddix, senior vice president and chief technical officer for Time Warner Cable, visited several classes as a Hearst Professional-in-Residence. He presented a Ph.D. colloquium on the implications of the Internet and media convergence. Time Warner Cable is the nation's largest group of cable TV operations, with facilities capable of reaching 20 percent of U.S homes.

Chiddix is known for the pioneering role he played in exploring uses for optical fiber technology in cable TV systems, and in 1994 he accepted on behalf of Time Warner Cable an Engineering Emmy for his work.

David Bernknopf, director of planning at CNN, did yeoman duty at the School for a week in November as another Hearst Professional-in-Residence.

Arriving on a Friday, he met with "NewsTeam Boulder" students to help plan newscasts for the following week, including one for which he served as executive producer. He also spoke to undergraduate and graduate TV reporting classes, news documentary classes and Critical Thinking and Writing classes.

"CNN has given David a week off every year so he can teach," Associate Dean Meg Moritz said.

Moritz said Bernknopf particularly likes to get student feedback on TV news ethics and noted that at CNN he started an internal newsletter on ethics.

For many students, the highlight of Bernknopf's visit was the CNN futures conference, held in the School's Reading Room. Producers in CNN's bureaus around the world are invited to participate in the conference call. The 30 students who crowded into the room heard Bernknopf and the other producers make decisions about what CNN would air that evening and on future newscasts.

Bernknopf also held a conference call for CNN's five student bureaus, one of which is at CU.

"Five of the CU stories got the OK, and that was practically everything our students pitched," Moritz said.
"It was clear our students did really well," she said. "David told them, " 'You guys kicked butt.' "

John Haralson, consultant and former Denver television news director, visited the School in October as another Hearst Professional-in-Residence. A performance coach, Haralson critiqued student broadcast news tapes and talked to the "NewsTeam Boulder" class.

Students got quite a bonus when ABC producer Jay Rothman ('84) visited a production class. Rothman, in Boulder on Oct. 30 to work the CU-Oklahoma football game, visited with broadcast students at the School's television studios in Folsom Stadium.

When Rothman arrived, however, he had the ABC on-air team with him, including color analyst Lynn Swann, play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler, director Chip Dean and sideline reporter Chip Tarkenton.

They detailed the rigors of broadcasting a college football game, in terms of both preparation and the live telecast, and discussed their experiences getting jobs in sports television.
Junior Fearon Carner was hired to help with other football telecasts after she worked the CU-Oklahoma game.

Last spring Jeff Kluger, a writer with Time magazine, visited several reporting classes as a Hearst Professional-in-Residence. Kluger was a senior editor and humor columnist at Discover magazine, health editor at Family Circle, and story editor at The New York Times Business World Magazine, associate editor at Science Digest.

He covers science in general and the space program in particular for Time. He is the co-author, along with astronaut Jim Lovell, of "Lost Moon," the book that served as the basis of the 1995 movie Apollo 13. Kluger served as a technical consultant on the film.

Kluger wrote the "The Apollo Adventure," a book that accompanied the release of the movie. And, his newest book, "Journey Beyond Selene," tells the story of the unmanned exploration of the solar system.