Dean Lemann, Faculty, Administrators, guests and the class of 2011, good afternoon

and welcome to our graduation. We made it.

I would like to begin with some fact checking, if I may. When the MS students
arrived at the J-School in August, we were put through a digital media boot camp.
We were told the boot camp would end in three weeks. But, ladies and gentlemen, a
correction is in order: it lasted almost 42 weeks – the entire program is a boot camp
– and has only just come to a screeching halt.

The class of 2011 – that has just crossed the finishing line – is an extraordinary one,
made up of remarkable people. And allow me to give you a sense of what I mean. In
the past 10 odd months, we have not only made huge leaps forward in our
knowledge base and skill sets, we have also endured insufferable hardship, caused
by courses like RW1 and E&I. If you do not know what either of those acronyms
mean, thank your stars, for you have been spared. But in all seriousness, some of my
fellow students have faced some of life’s most difficult challenges while juggling
their schoolwork: they have lost loved ones, undergone surgery, lost their funding,
and yet they have stayed the course. For some of our international students, English
is a second, third or fourth language, yet they have managed to write at a level
unimaginable to them even a couple of years ago. One of our students actually went
through her entire pregnancy this school year and with the birth of baby Lorenzo,
our number has actually grown by one. And we, the Class of 2011, have survived the
coldest winter in New York history. I can safely say that this group of people are the
most determined, hardworking, some of the smartest, yet the most friendly and fun
bunch of people I have ever met. And that is why it’s an honor to be a part of this
family. Now like all families, we are somewhat dysfunctional, but… in the end, we
are the few, the poor, the proud.

***

There’s one thing really that I’d like to share with you today, and that’s something
that’s been said to me repeatedly over this past school year. “J-School is all about
choices.” And I’d like to dwell on this idea of choice, just briefly. For example, we all
picked different concentrations in our programmes this year. As some of us learned
the hard way, choices are important.

And while that might be true for anyone graduating, I would argue that it is of
particular importance to young journalists and journalists-in-training today.
Because above and beyond our abilities and capabilities to report and produce, what
will really matter is what we decide to do with them. This is true in terms of building
careers in an industry which is in great flux.

But more importantly, choice matters, because journalism in its heart of hearts is a
creative profession. At its heart, as you know very well, lies the art of storytelling.
And so as artists, we make crucial decisions not everyday, not every hour, but every
minute. We make them in the stories we choose report, the people we speak to for
those stories, the perspectives we include and the ways in which we package and
produce them. Creative work, it turns out, is done primarily through a process of
elimination. Our stories are written not in the quotes and characters we include, but
in those that we leave out.

It is difficult to admit that absolute free choice while an ideal, is but a myth. Our
decisions are governed and limited by the world around us. But it is also our own
knowledge or lack of it, that limits us. For example, we can only report that coveted
untold story if we know enough about it in the first place. And so, one of the ways to
give ourselves the best chance at making the freest, the most independent, and the
most ethical decision, is by making it the most and best informed.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, I think is what we have gained in our time at the
school: knowledge with which to make these difficult decisions.

Education – yes – is a transformative experience, and an excellent education is

***

There are many people to thank for this experience. It’s been an incredibly exciting
year to be at the J-School for all the new developments going on in the building but
also the big news stories breaking all around us and that have visited us at the
school in the form of journalists covering them.

First and foremost, on behalf of the student government, and our entire class, I’d like
to thank our adviser, Rebecca Castillo who could unfortunately not be with us here
today, but without whose support, guidance and help we could not have functioned.
Rebecca, I hope you’re watching the livestream, thank you for everything and we
wish you a quick and full recovery.

The SPJ Board members have been inspirational in their drive and energy to do
things for their classmates. Just in the past couple of months, they have put on
events that classes have been rescheduled to accommodate. I cannot claim credit for
these and the other initiatives, so may I request the SPJ Board of 2011 to please
stand and be recognized for their phenomenal work.

I’d like also like to thank our teachers and mentors for their time and dedication, all
the school staff for their patience, hard work and diligence, and my fellow students
for keeping each other going. I’d also like to commend my class for being the first
standing class in the history of the J-School to make a donation to the school that
will go towards scholarships for other students.

Finally, I’d like to thank my mother and my family, and by extension, everyone’s
families and friends who have supported us through this year, and indeed
throughout our lives. Thank you mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, significant
others, uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends and pets. We would not be here without
you.

So, as we stand here at the threshold of life-beyond-school, I can only hope that the
education and the relationships that we have built here will give us both the
knowledge and the courage to make the right choices, but also the daring ones.
Professor Sig Gissler at the start of the year urged us to descend into the streets of
New York with a sense of joyful entitlement, that that was the way to be a reporter.
And we thank him for inspiring us with that. But if I could co-opt his phrase to say
that I wish for my class as we turn our attention to the Powers That Be in those
fancy editorial offices and newsrooms, that we take with us a sense of joyful
empowerment. Let us make our choices and find our voices, and let our work, and
its quality, be the expression of that. You have something to say and the world needs
to hear it.

Class of 2011, that I hope will make you, not journalistic functionaries, but the
visionaries that you are all more than capable of becoming.

Choose well; be well.

Congratulations and thank you.