San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
SFSU journalism professor knew solid news
The already deeply troubled Bay Area journalism industry, suffering from many of the same problems afflicting the rest of the nation’s news business, suffered another blow this month. The sudden death of renowned journalism professor Leonard Sellers brought much of the best of the business back into brief focus.
Len had a doctorate in journalism from Stanford University. Despite what many reporters and editors who actually produce news and information know, what’s taught in journalism graduate schools and what actually makes news are often two different beasts, Len was the rarest of J-school teachers: He knew what solid news was, what made a good story — and what was a bucket of partisan slop.
As a reporter for a deeply respected and important Bay Area newspaper, I had independently learned the value of using databases, as well as photography and, of course, carefully chosen words to break and tell important, interesting and authoritative news stories. That led me to discovering the first mass market web browser, Mosaic. I was immediately and completely blown away by its possibilities.
Around the same time, I had been invited to teach part time at San Francisco State University’s journalism department. I wanted to stay with my fulltime reporting career but, hopefully, help prepare the next generation of would-be reporters and editors for the next generation of news and information.
I approached the people running the SFSU journalism department in 1994 about teaching something entirely new: online journalism. The dean of the college actually asked me with a puzzled look if it had something to do with laundry. Eventually they gave me an OK — if I could raise some grant money to fund it. I did. My goal was to not just yap about this amazing new journalism platform but to actually produce online news — as a former New York Timeseditor put it — of verification. Not assertion. The resulting publication was NewsPort.org. It was either the first or the second such university class in the nation, maybe the world. It attracted some of the best and brightest students from departments across the university. They wanted to report.
At the back of the class a hawkeyed older guy with a seriously intelligent face started showing up at the pilot course. He simply watched. Intensely. On the third instance, I went up to introduce myself. He told me his name was Len Sellers. I had heard about him, of course. Everyone anywhere near the department at the time had. He owned a reputation as a professor to be feared. I found the opposite. He was a man to be respected. He actually knew news and what made strong, relevant, worthy
Courtesy of Sellers Family news stories. He was sincerely fascinated by the changes in news media and their possibilities. He was wonderfully warm, genuinely generous and terrifically good humored. He was fiercely intelligent, bone honest and superbly educated. In short — he was an extraordinary dude. And he, too, wanted to report.
Len eventually accepted my invitation to co-teach the course. We became good friends and never lost regular contact.
He eventually left SFSU and went full-on into the World Wide Web business. He made a small fortune there, indulged in his lifelong passion for boating, and had some remarkable travels.
He also almost died twice. The first time from a heart attack at a Sausalito coffee shop. The doctor actually said he had died. But somehow, his eyes opened and he began to breathe again. A few years ago, Len’s doctor told him his respiratory illness was terminal. They put him in a hospice. The doctors said he had, at best, six months to live. He beat the reaper on that one, too, returning to his Marin home a few months later, telling ribald stories and lamenting the state of the news business. Everything about Len Sellers seemed just downright remarkable.
In the past few years, he had had again slowly fallen ill, but we were still able to have regular lunches. On Friday, March 8, a mutual old NewsPort friend told me Len had once again entered hospice and was not allowed visitors. I wrote him a brief email asking for an update. He wrote back the next morning:
“Yes, there have been some changes lately. I’m back in hospice, and the medication has been kicked up to methadone. I was hoping for warm and fuzzy, but I just get fuzzy. Conversations are difficult and I can’t walk around the house without sucking air. New levels of meds scheduled to start today, so we will see how it goes. Hope all is okay with you. I will check in when there is something to report. — Len”
My friend Leonard Sellers died early the next morning at age 79. Call me a denier, but I’m waiting by the phone to hear from him again.