From Newsweek to campus: A Q&A with Karl Gude
Karl Gude has done it all.
Or maybe it just seems that way. His remarkable career saw him heading up two of the nation’s most visible news graphics outfits at the Associated Press and Newsweek magazine.
But then, last summer, he stepped away from the Rat Race. Lacking a college degree himself, Karl became a graphics instructor at Michigan State University in Lansing.
Michigan State’s Karl Gude.
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By all accounts, Karl rocked. We were sure impressed by the work done by Allisence Chang this summer. One of Karl’s top students, Allisence was The Virginian-Pilot’s graphics intern. You’ll see her next month in Boston — she’s one of the ten students competing in this year’s “The Intern” contest.
Meanwhile, Karl spent a busy summer teaching and consulting in Bangalore, Delhi, Madrid and Pamplona. Last week, he began his second year at State.
What’s it like, teaching full-time? Should we all think about joining him in academia?
Karl agreed to answer a few questions for us…
Q. Do you miss the thrill of breaking news? The deadlines? Jimmy Olsen running copy for Lois Lane?
A. Uh, nope. Not at my age (52), although I loved covering breaking news most of all.
My wife just told a friend, “Karl and I are planning on how we’re going to spend all the extra years he’s going to live.”
Karl at Newsweek.
—I’ve been covering news since Carter was president and after 27 years of:
* Canceling 80% of dinner plans with my wife and still managing to keep the marriage together.
* Running down hallways screaming for someone to give me a blank VCR tape to record breaking news on CNN because someone stole mine.
* Taking my news-stunned staff out to a greasy sunrise breakfast after pulling another all-nighter.
* Crying in my cereal because I got my butt whipped by the competition (very rare, of course).
I now have:
* Three months off in the summer.
* Three weeks off at Christmas-time.
* A week off during spring break.
* One of the amazing things about academia is that I have been encouraged to pursue any and all my dreams that relate to my work, something I was not able to do with a stressful, full-time job. Several weeks ago I was sitting in my office thinking how wonderful it would be to get some of the greatest visual communicators into a small room and to hear them talk about their work. So I’m doing it. The attendees will all enjoy learning from each other, too, so it’s a win-win situation.
* And I hang out with incredibly young and optomistic people who are fun and are spinning their wheels to get out there and take their shot at a career in journalism.
During the Virginia Tech shooting I called Ed Gabel, who left Time shortly after I left Newsweek, and asked him how he felt about not being there for such a big story. He was visiting family down in Florida and said that he just “turned off the TV and went back out to the pool.” So did I. I now have a pool?
Karl’s Andy Warhol/iPod self-portrait.
—Q. Many of us out here in newspaper land are awfully envious of you educators. What are the downsides to academic life — things we never hear about?
A. * Kids think you’re old. And you are.
* The pay could be better. But hey, I live in Lansing, not New York.
* My view sucks:
- Before: My old Newsweek view of Central Park.
- After: My current view from the College of Communication Arts and Sciences building, showing the parking lot with a power plant in the distance.
* I have to share a room at SND Boston with about five students, who are also broke (don’t panic, they’re guys).
* When a design instructor with little professional experience (not from the J-school) found out that I never went to college, he said: “That man is never teaching in my class.”
* I hate grading. Too much math.
* But honestly? There are no downsides. How come no one told me about this years ago? I love it.
Q. How many classes do you teach?
A. I teach two classes a semester, and each meets twice a week for two hours each time. Welcome to academia.
I have about 36 students total. Compare this to a high school English teacher who has 110 students and teaches six or seven classes A DAY for five straight days!
Both classes are for beginners. One is called ‘Introduction to Information Graphics’ and the other ‘Information Graphics and Public Affairs.’ In the latter we interview politicians and make lots of newsy graphics culminating in a full-page graphic. I’ve attached the page built by your intern, Allisence Chang.
Please click for a larger view
—In the intro course, I take a broader look at the subject and we do crazy things like a campus-wide treasure hunt to learn mapping, diagram your favorite sandwich so that an alien could understand it to learn packaging and we fake-rob our college deli, called Sparty’s, in order to diagram a crime scene.
Considering that I teach in a J-school, my students are mostly writers who have little experience with design or illustration. So, before we even start looking into what to visualize in a news story, I first have to teach basic design theory as well as how to use Illustrator and InDesign. Ouch! That eats up half the semester! But the kids are great and work hard, and some do okay.
“This photo of our students was shot at a QuickCourse last semester here at MSU,” Kar says. “I’m pictured with our SND student chapter, a club run by my new friends Cheryl Pell and Darcy Greene (If you see them in Boston, say hi!). The t-shirts say, “Show Us Your Body (of work!).”
—Q. When we hired Allisence as our graphics intern this summer, we figured she’d be pretty good. But man, she was REALLY, REALLY good. Are these kids really that much smarter than we were when we were in college? Or did we just suck that badly?
A. They didn’t teach information graphics back in the dark ages when you were in college! Most universities still don’t, certainly not by anyone who’s ever produced them. Alberto Cairo at UNC, Terence Oliver at Ohio, a few others — they’re the exceptions to the rule. Most of us old guys had to learn the trade the hard way, by screwing up!
Karl in Syracuse last February with Alberto Cairo (left) and Terence Oliver (middle). Photo from Karl’s blog.
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Q. Thinking back over your first two semesters, what was the highlight? Was there any one moment at which you told yourself: ‘Ah, y’know, this is going to work out…’?A. A few, actually:
* When my son got a girlfriend and stopped hating me for making him leave Connecticut.
* When my wife got a job and we could afford a vacation.
* When no one dropped out of my classes because they sucked.
* When Newsweek stopped consuming my night thoughts (old habits die hard).
* When I got a girlfriend.
Q. What advice do you have for a designer or artist who’s considering leaving the field to teach at the college level?
A. * Get some workshops and/or other teaching under your belt. They’ll want to see that you’ve taught before. Plus, you’ll lean heavily on your workshop teaching techniques and lectures when you get into a classroom.
* Figure out how you can bring some money into a college, a key to getting their attention (research grants, conferences, etc.).
* Get your masters degree if you can. I’m just a high school grad, but I got extremely lucky. But hey, you might, also.
* J-schools want to modernize. They’re all trying to predict what the future of journalism will bring and they want to teach those skills, so you must be their vision. Think/learn new ways to deliver information so that a university will want to cling to you like a life preserver.
* Act soon. J-schools want visual thinkers/practioners.
Karl hams it up with MSU colleague Cheryl Pell.
—Q. So, do you get football tickets?
A. Yup. Sure do. Just laid out $1,200 for four season tickets to see the MSU Spartans football team.
Q. Do you still read Newsweek?
A. What’s that?
Find Karl’s own VizEds blog here.
Thanks for your time, Karl. Best wishes to you and your students for another successful school year!
September 4th, 2007 at 9:46 am
What a great Q&A! I’ll never forget Syracuse 2007 and being in the room with two of the smartest people I’ve ever met: Karl Gude and the author of this blog, Mr. Apple. It was great!