Reese Cleghorn, dean of the University of Maryland School of Journalism from 1981 to 2000.

I’m a stickler - a term made popular by Lynne Truss in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” her paean to the values of grammatical correctness. For some, my adherence to the rules of the proverbial road borders on ridiculous, but for me, it is close to godliness. An out-of-place comma or a possessive when plural is intended (as in “five star’s to watch”) is enough to send me over the edge.

Although I may have been blessed at birth (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with the ability to see a preposition dangling from a mile away, I also credit the dean of my journalism school for my sometimes manic devotion to linguistic accuracy. Reese Cleghorn started as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism department in 1981, my freshman year there. He established strict standards and quickly transformed the school from being barely a footnote to one of the best - if not the best - journalism schools in the country. Cleghorn passed away earlier this week.

Of course, Cleghorn instilled in UM journalism students so much more than a passion for language. He also taught us the fundamentals that should guide every true journalist: integrity, ethics and objectivity. He made sure professors gave us history lessons along with tutorials on how to write a solid lead. To Cleghorn, journalism was a profession on par with the law. A Baltimore Sun article from 2001 quoted him as saying, “Since we are all journalists, I get to preach the gospel, go to the freshmen and tell them we are the only profession mentioned in the Constitution, that we have a unique responsibility and our democratic government depends on it.”

Preach he did, and as one of his faithful disciples, I happily absorbed his philosophy. 

I still proudly carry the wisdom of Cleghorn’s journalistic training with me in my work as a public relations professional. While the public relations concentration is no longer part of UM’s journalism school, I recommend anyone interested in a PR career to pursue a degree in journalism there.  The skills learned and the insights gained are invaluable in all areas of the communications field. 

To this day, I apply the timeless lessons he and his faculty taught on writing well and telling a good story. Cleghorn’s definition of an effective journalist, as described in the May 2000 issue of the monthly American Journalism Review (of which he was president), remains true today:

“No doubt we’ll still be experimenting with how to make news more comprehensible, more memorable, more flexible for multiple uses. But more important will be sharpening up for our main mission, as storytellers. Not as mere information conduits; anybody can do that. But as people who can find the stories, understand them and tell them compellingly.”

The legacy of Reese Cleghorn, stickler extraordinaire, lives on in thousands of students who, like me, are better storytellers for having learned from him.

Last Monday, national alcoholism authority Father Joseph C. Martin died in his Havre De Grace, Md. home after a long battle with heart disease. The addiction treatment facility he co-founded, Father Martin’s Ashley, is a client of ours.

The world of addiction treatment by its very nature is relatively anonymous. Fr. Martin may not have been a household name to some, but if you talk to anyone who has been treated for addiction or their family members, there’s a very good chance they have seen his ubiquitous films – his “Chalk Talk” lecture being the most recognized – or read one his books.

The mainstream television, print and digital media coverage surrounding Fr. Martin’s passing was anything but under the radar. An obituary that ran in today’s New York Times was among the more moving tributes.

Representing an organization that literally saves lives has always been an incredibly rewarding experience for us. Working with local and national media to celebrate Fr. Martin’s life last week was beyond gratifying. It was a true honor.

The endless string of newspaper collapses is threatening to throw me into a depression.

The Rocky Mountain News published its last issue two weeks ago. Both the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer may close. Earlier this winter the four parent companies of The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and The New Haven Register said they’d be filing for bankruptcy.

As entrenched in new technologies as I am (social media is part of nearly every campaign we create, I’m facebook obsessed, and my iPhone’s become an appendage), I must confess: I’m a gal with a four paper-a-day habit. I love the physical experience of reading the newspapers – seeing the information laid out, sorting through sections. Clearly this proclivity may soon be nothing but nostalgia.

I’m an optimist though, and the reality is I’m much more concerned about the news itself than the paper it’s printed on, so Larry Kramer’s article in The Daily Beast intrigued me.

Kramer argues that the news industry – not the newspaper industry – is viable if the producers of news would listen to their customers and give them what they want.

“And guess what, they want news” – whether it be via “television, newspapers, BlackBerries, cellphones, magazines or web.”

Kramer sees a window of opportunity, “Consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time.”

This squares with what our clients at Context-Based Research Group found when they conducted an anthropological study of people’s news consumption habits on behalf of the Consumers are struggling with news fatigue. Interestingly, the research also revealed that they’re yearning for in-depth stories.

Kramer’s article which, interestingly, ultimately endorses a model that resembles a wire-service approach – divorcing news gatherers from news outlets – appealed to me because it takes an action-oriented tone and suggests there’s something that may be done before it’s too late. His call for newspapers to stop doing the Sisyphean task of selling something to people that they refuse to buy sounds right, even to this newspaper addict.

Regardless of what the new model is exactly, it’s clear that finding a new incarnation and proactively implementing it is imperative for us all – news consumers, producers, and communicators alike.

A recent tale of communication gone wrong caught our attention.

When Jason Roe, an Irish freelance web designer, found a glitch in Ryanair’s online flight booking system, he wrote a post about it on his blog. The flaw resulted in a $0.00 price quote on the flight he was booking (though the system didn’t actually allow him to obtain the free flight). Instead of acknowledging the problem, or attempting to correct it, a Ryanair staff member posted a response to Jason’s blog, which read, “jason! you’re an idiot and a liar!!” A pretty bizarre way to react, we think. A number of Ryanair staffers chimed in with equally tactless comments. The debate among the airline and blog visitors ran 400+ comments long. What’s worse though is an official Ryanair spokesperson later confirmed the comments came from staff members and reinforced the company’s low-road approach by saying, “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again.” Wow. Talk about counterproductive. It seems the entire Ryanair team needs a lesson in social media interaction as well as general customer communication.

What the exchange did get Ryanair though is attention – which may be what it’s seeking if we judge by the company’s strange threat just a few days earlier to charge passengers for bathroom usage on its planes. (That story grabbed headlines across the globe.) Is any PR is good PR? While we know there’s a place for controversy in PR, we don’t think so.

Interestingly, at our previous agency, we represented one of the top airlines in the country when a glitch on their web site allowed users to book a trip from Chicago to India for a small fraction of the actual price. This was the pre-blog era, but frequent flyer sites jumped on it and suggested people take advantage before it was fixed. More than 100 people did just that. Going against our counsel, they originally told customers they would not honor the low fares. When every major media outlet began to cover the story, they quickly reversed their position during an appearance on the TODAY show.

When companies make mistakes, they fare better (pun intended) by admitting it and doing the right thing for affected customers, thereby turning potentially negative exposure into good PR.