This column is a part of a series of alums reflecting on their time at The Eagle in celebration of our 100th anniversary. If you would like to submit a column, visit this page. The Eagle is also fundraising to support its future. If you’d like to give a donation to support The Eagle, please consider doing so here.
I first entered The Eagle newsroom in the Mary Graydon Center in September 1970. I had transferred to American University in my sophomore year, with the intent to major in journalism. While I ultimately majored in history, my participation on The Eagle staff from 1970 through spring 1973 proved most instrumental in developing the skills that I later employed as a professional journalist for 27 years.
When I joined The Eagle staff, I did so with the intent of writing reviews of popular music records. However, I was soon recruited by an Eagle staffer to become a news reporter where I first covered the student government council and later, a variety of other stories.
Among other things, being on The Eagle taught me how to interview people to gather information, how to develop ideas for news stories and how to write punchy leads that attracted readers’ attention.
In my senior year (1972-73), I became The Eagle’s news editor, where I learned how to supervise a staff of reporters, write headlines and edit the work of other reporters. On Wednesdays, we would often spend all night working on stories, laying out the paper and writing headlines. The work was both exhilarating and exhausting.
The skills I learned on The Eagle proved essential once I began my professional journalistic career, first in a small town near Philadelphia, later for newspapers in Delaware and Maryland, and ultimately, my 20-year career as a journalist in D.C. for financial newswires.
I served on The Eagle during a tumultuous period in U.S. history. The Vietnam War was still raging, the country was polarized over whether the war should end, and male students often feared being drafted into the military. There were periodic demonstrations on campus to protest the war.
- One early assignment was to interview AU students who were also serving part-time in the National Guard. At the time, there was a perception that those serving in the National Guard did so to avoid being sent to Vietnam. I interviewed them on the day of a large anti-Vietnam War rally on the National Mall. The purpose of the assignment was to find out what these students serving in the National Guard thought about the anti-war rally.
- I recall travelling to the D.C. Armory near Capitol Hill (D.C. did not have a metro then) and meeting with military officers who then drove me in a military jeep to meet with the AU students serving in the National Guard. The consensus of those students was that the demonstration was acceptable as long as the protests remained peaceful.
During my time on The Eagle, I also learned that journalists would have to cope with the occasional backlash from running unflattering stories. In one episode, three AU vice presidents resigned in a leadership shakeup. One of the president’s assistants later complained about The Eagle’s coverage by saying the vice presidents did not resign, they had “relinquished their posts.”
Besides the journalistic and relationship skills I learned as an Eagle staffer, I most cherish the friendships established on the paper as I remain in touch with several of those former Eagle colleagues more than 50 years later.
Ed Kean CAS/B.A. ‘73 was The Eagle’s news editor in the 1972-1973 academic year. After graduation, he was a newspaper reporter for papers in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, Newark, Delaware and Annapolis, Maryland from 1973-82. He then worked for a series of financial newswires in D.C. from 1982 to 2000. In 2001, he joined an economic consulting firm and worked for economic consulting firms until his retirement in July 2024.
