News vet Knight reaches out through classroom, textbook

Robert Knight

Robert Knight ('67) has taught journalistic writing and English composition at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania for five years. This spring, the second edition of his textbook, "A Journalistic Approach to Good Writing: The Craft of Clarity," was published by Iowa State Press.

"As the only person who teaches journalism at this small college, I try my best to open up heads and pour in skills and knowledge. I'm in an English Department that emphasizes literature, so what I do is foreign to much of the rest of the department and the college. Taking students from a perspective of expository writing and jerking them into the hard skills of journalistic writing is difficult, but it's quite rewarding when they 'get' it. And most do," he said.

"I believe that journalistic writing provides bedrock skills for any form of writing, from ad copy to poetry to computer manuals to office memos, and it's too bad more Americans – especially high school English teachers – aren't exposed to it.  I hope some of them read my book."

Knight, 62, earned his master's degree from DePaul University in 1996 while working as an editor at the City News Bureau of Chicago.

A former wire service, newspaper and broadcast reporter and past president of the Chicago Headline Club – the Chicago professional chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists – Knight also taught journalistic writing in the evening division of Northwestern University for 13 years.

Although many journalists have moved into public relations, it was the other way around for Knight.

"I had completed my first two years at CU and ran out of money, so I worked a while in Chicago. Some of my Chicago friends were in public relations, and it sounded glamorous at the time, so I took a PR course at Northwestern," he said.

"I learned that journalism was a good route to PR, so I enrolled in the CU J-school. Halfway through, I determined that I liked journalism for its own sake."

After graduating, Knight went to work for UPI in Denver, was transferred to Albuquerque, then worked for The New Mexican in Santa Fe and for broadcasting organizations in New Mexico, specializing in covering state government.

"Later, I returned to Chicago, free-lanced for many years, then became an associate editor and broadcast editor at the City News Bureau of Chicago before taking a teaching job at Gettysburg," he said.

"I cherish mostly the balance of knowledge and skills I learned at the CU J-school. I enjoyed the emphasis on ethics, the Constitution, the history of journalism and journalism and society, and I especially liked the development of writing skills under Robert Rhode.

"I hated the basic reporting class of John Mitchell's, but once I got out in the world, I wished I had suffered through more of his labs."

Knight said he misses "just about everything about Boulder and CU."

"I've kept in touch mainly with John McLaughlin ('67) in Denver, or J.P. as he's now known, and Guy ('67) and Marcia ('67) Tempel Wood at the Sangre de Cristo Chronicle in Angel Fire, N.M.," he said.

Knight and his wife, Susan, have been married for 38 years. They have two grown daughters, Kelly and Leigh, who live in Chicago.

"I do some acting, including a living-history gig at the Gettysburg National Military Park each summer," he said.

"I interact with tourists and play the role of Samuel Wilkeson Jr., who covered the battle for Henry Raymond's The New York Times and most of the rest of the war for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. Wilkeson's son died in the battle."

rknight@gettysburg.edu