{"id":293505,"date":"2026-05-29T09:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T14:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/christianchronicle.org\/?p=293505"},"modified":"2026-05-29T13:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T18:52:15","slug":"40-years-later-lessons-learned-in-high-school-journalism-class-still-resonate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianchronicle.org\/40-years-later-lessons-learned-in-high-school-journalism-class-still-resonate\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons learned in high school journalism class still resonate"},"content":{"rendered":"

KELLER, TEXAS<\/strong> \u2014\u00a0Ronald Reagan<\/a> was president.<\/p>\n

\u201cTop Gun\u201d<\/a> and \u201cFerris Bueller\u2019s Day Off\u201d<\/a> were massive hits at the box office.<\/p>\n

Telephones were attached to the wall,<\/a> and long-distance calls were expensive.<\/a> Not home? People left messages on answering machines.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/em><\/a> landed in my driveway each morning, and when I had enough quarters, I bought the Dallas Morning News<\/em><\/a> and the Dallas Times Herald<\/em><\/a> at newsracks outside Food Fare, the only grocery store in this North Texas community.<\/p>\n

Big hair was, um, big<\/em> \u2014\u00a0both for the girls I knew<\/a> and the pop culture that defined<\/a> the time.<\/p>\n

The year was 1986.<\/p>\n

\"Bobby<\/a>

Bobby Ross Jr.\u2019s senior picture appears in the Keller High School yearbook in 1986.<\/p><\/div>\n

I graduated from Keller High School that May \u2014 exactly 40 years ago \u2014 so I find myself a bit nostalgic during this annual season of pomp and circumstance.<\/a><\/p>\n

In past columns, I\u2019ve reflected on my 35 years in full-time journalism<\/a> and my 25 years covering religion news.<\/a><\/p>\n

But I got my actual start writing for newspapers as a KHS student.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Keller, about 15 miles north of Fort Worth, was still more farm town<\/a> than burgeoning suburb back then. An old gray water tower that proclaimed \u201cKeller: Home of the Indians\u201d greeted visitors along U.S. 377, referring to the school mascot.<\/p>\n

I played sousaphone in the KHS marching band, traveled on mission trips to Mexico<\/a> with my church youth group and drove my old Ford Pinto to flip Quarter Pounders at a McDonald\u2019s<\/a> in nearby North Richland Hills. In my free time, I listened to Texas Rangers games<\/a> on my transistor radio.<\/p>\n

But the turning point that transformed my high school experience \u2014 and my eventual career path \u2014\u00a0came when my late friend Jack O\u2019Pelt<\/a> urged me to join him in taking a journalism class.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The late Jack O\u2019Pelt and Bobby Ross Jr. read a newspaper in the late 1980s or early 1990s. O\u2019Pelt, the best friend of Bobby\u2019s brother, Scott Ross, for 30 years, died suddenly in 2015.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

I liked writing, and I needed an elective course, so I figured, \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Crane\u201d \u2014\u00a0now Janie Crane Burchfield \u2014 was our teacher.<\/p>\n

In her class, we learned how to count headlines,<\/a> which in the days before electronic pagination was necessary for print layout purposes. We steered proportion wheels<\/a> to calculate photo sizes and cropping. We wrote our stories in longhand and sent them to a typesetter, who returned strips of text we cut with X-acto knives and arranged on pages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But those ancient skills weren\u2019t the most important lessons Ms. Crane bestowed.<\/p>\n

\"Diana<\/a>

Diana Dworin\u2019s notes from a high school journalism class taught by Janie Crane Burchfield in the 1980s offer tips for counting headlines.<\/p><\/div>\n

From the moment I walked into her classroom my sophomore year, her passion for core journalistic values<\/a> such as truth, accuracy, fairness and impartiality resonated with me. She taught English students, too, but that subject wasn\u2019t what drove her 25-year teaching career.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason I taught was to teach journalism,\u201d she told me in a Facebook message this week.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take me long to decide I wanted to spend my life in the newspaper business.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

But first, I had to muster the courage to conduct my first interview.<\/p>\n

Shy and introverted, I moved around a lot as a kid. My father served in the Air Force and then became a preacher.<\/a> I attended schools in five states \u2014 Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee \u2014 before we moved to Keller in 1982 for Mom and Dad to serve as houseparents<\/a> at a Christian children\u2019s home. In my freshman year at KHS, I often ate lunch alone.<\/p>\n

So when I got my first story assignment \u2014 a piece on the KHS stage band earning superior ratings \u2014\u00a0I scribbled my questions on a piece of paper. I snuck into band director Wayne Tympanick\u2019s office and stuck my request for answers on his desk.<\/p>\n

\"1980s-era<\/a>

1980s-era copies of The Wigwam, the Keller High School student newspaper, are pictured.<\/p><\/div>\n

Before long, Tympanick came and found me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be a journalist, you need to sit down and ask me these questions,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

So I did.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Over the next two years, I devoted more and more of my time to The Wigwam.<\/em> I reported on topics ranging from students cheating to a fatal crash involving classmates I knew. By the second half of my junior year, I became the editor.<\/p>\n

I covered trends such as the \u201cVCR craze\u201d \u2014 as we described it in a headline.<\/p>\n

Here was the lede I wrote as an 18-year-old senior:<\/p>\n

Signs that something\u2019s sizzling, maybe even sweeping the nation, certainly abound.<\/em><\/p>\n

From the ever-expanding number of video specialty shoppes to local supermarkets to convenience stores, rent-a-movie places are popping up almost everywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many teens are staying home on the weekends, popping their own corn and throwing \u201cVCR parties\u201d, as a substitute for those expensive, sky-high-priced trips to the movie theaters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Besides our serious reporting, we had a whole lot of fun, too.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Keller High School yearbook article from the 1980s profiles the student newspaper staff, including Bobby Ross Jr. Although Ross is pictured in a Texas Longhorns hat, he later repented and became an Oklahoma Sooners fan.<\/p><\/div>\n

My junior year, Keller High opened a new school building with a large classroom for the newspaper and yearbook staffs. Each publication had its\u00a0own office. They were side by side, and one day I mischievously lifted the tiles above the newspaper office and crawled into the ceiling space above the yearbook side to listen to the conversation below. Fortunately, when I crashed to the ground as I left a messy crater overhead, a chair below softened my fall.<\/p>\n

Ms. Crane was anything but happy with me. But she evidently didn\u2019t kill me. Because I lived to type this.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

Fellow Wigwam <\/em>staff member Diana Williams \u2014 now Diana Dworin \u2014 was a year younger than me but just as devoted to a future in journalism. While I was a geeky teen, her outgoing, bubbly personality made her popular beyond the newspaper classroom. She\u2019d later attend the University of Texas and work for the Austin American-Statesman.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

One time, Dworin and I wrote a joint column on how \u201csqueezing the Charmin\u201d had joined the list of KHS extracurricular activities. Yes, pranking people by covering their house, yard or trees with toilet paper was a thing even back then.<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a>

As high school students, Bobby Ross Jr. and Diana Dworin wrote a column about students\u2019 toilet paper pranks.<\/p><\/div>\n

To my delight, Dworin \u2014 now a hospital chaplain and, like me, a doting grandparent<\/a> \u2014\u00a0recently mailed me a package of old Wigwams<\/em> that helped stir the memories I\u2019m sharing.<\/p>\n

Another Wigwam<\/em> alum is Barry Ryan, a fellow Class of 1986 graduate who was one of my best friends at KHS. We still enjoy catching up from time to time at Rangers games.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were a very good team that complemented each other well,\u201d Ryan said of our high school newspaper experience. \u201cI enjoyed both the camaraderie and, in the case of Bobby and Diana, the playful and healthy competition. As a bystander to it all, it was great to watch the banter and the occasional one-upmanship.<\/p>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t\t<\/promotion-zone>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n

\u201cFor me,\u201d he added in a Facebook message, \u201cthe opportunity to explore, learn and develop skills in addition to some outstanding friendship was a privilege and a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amen to all of that!<\/p>\n

After graduating from KHS, I attended Oklahoma Christian University,<\/a> where I edited the campus newspaper The Talon <\/em>and earned my journalism degree in 1990. I later reported for small community newspapers<\/a> in Oklahoma for three years before joining The Oklahoman<\/em> staff<\/a> in 1993 and then going to work for The Associated Press<\/a> in Nashville, Tenn., in 2002.<\/p>\n

\"Friends<\/a>

Friends who worked together at McDonald\u2019s in the 1980s reunite at a Texas Rangers game in 2023. Pictured, from left, are Barry Ryan, Rick Kalifa, Scott Ross, Bobby Ross Jr., Tony Cintron and Cintron\u2019s wife.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ve spent the past 21 years<\/a> with The Christian Chronicle,<\/em> based in Oklahoma City. I\u2019ve traveled to all 50 states<\/a> and 20 countries<\/a> to cover the news. I launched the Plug-in column<\/a> for Religion Unplugged<\/em> in 2020 and am in my seventh year of writing it.<\/p>\n

In so many ways, I\u2019m living my dream life as a journalist \u2014 four decades after my Wigwam<\/em> days at Keller High.<\/p>\n

In so many ways, I\u2019m living my dream life as a journalist \u2014 four decades after my Wigwam<\/em> days at Keller High.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To all my friends in the Class of 1986, happy 40th anniversary!<\/p>\n

I know there\u2019s a reunion planned, but I won\u2019t be able to make it. Total honesty: That shy, introverted teen inside me never completely disappeared, and I\u2019m still not ready for that level of social interaction.<\/p>\n

\n

BOBBY ROSS JR.\u00a0<\/b>is Editor-in-Chief of\u00a0The Christian Chronicle.<\/i>\u00a0Ross writes the\u00a0Weekend Plug-in column<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Religion Unplugged,\u00a0<\/i>where this piece originally appeared. Reach him at\u00a0bobby@christianchronicle.org.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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