No. 257 – Dancing with the Moonlit Knight

Performer: Genesis

Songwriters: Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford

Original Release: Selling England By the Pound

Year: 1973

Definitive Version: Live in Chicago, 1978.

When I returned to Northwestern in January 1987 for my first quarter of the masters program at Medill, I was feeling pretty fortunate. For one, I’d survived whatever illness it was that sent me to Riverside Methodist Hospital (good ol’ No. 721). For another, I’d survived Boot Camp by the thinnest of hairs on my chinny chin chin.

However, I had to scramble. I was a week behind due to my illness hitting me the day before I was to drive back. Luckily, I had Frank pick up my class syllaby, so I could hit the ground running when I arrived.

I went in armed with a brand-new (to me) bootleg tape of Genesis, which featured this never-before-heard (by me) song. Later, I took particular delight when I first spied the long-closed-but-still-standing Uptown Theater, where Live in Chicago was recorded.

I had three classes my winter quarter. The main one was a reporting class. (I don’t remember the other two.) To graduate from Medill, you had to take three reporting or publishing classes with a concentration in some discipline. You had to take at least one classified as “hard news.” Students who looked to break into newspapers took News or Politics. After my dismal failure in Boot Camp, I didn’t want to have a thing to do with either. I chose Business.

Business had twice weekly deadlines, which beat daily all to heck. It also was structured a bit like Boot Camp in that the first couple of weeks were classroom work followed by going out and covering a beat. Business classes were held at Fiske Hall in Evanston, whereas all the other hard-news classes were in the downtown office, so I didn’t have a commute, which was nice.

After meeting with my instructor, a seasoned vet named George Harmon, and apologizing for my absence, I launched full tilt into my course work. I had a story due almost immediately, and this time the grades counted.

History doesn’t record the subject, but it does the B+ at the top of the front page. I’ll never forget seeing that grade, nor will I forget that my instructor wrote, “good lede” beneath it.

This was memorable because my Boot Camp instructor—name forgotten on purpose, as I mentioned—HATED my ledes. If I didn’t rewrite every one of them for her, it had to have been 90 percent.

Now, on the first story of my new class, my new instructor complimented my lede. And it was MY lede. I didn’t write it with the goal of trying to get it approved as I had for the past month. I wrote it as it should have been given the story.

It was an invaluable, although unintentional, lesson on the value of criticism when it comes to writing: It really is subjective. My previous instructor hated me; my current instructor liked me. In my mind, it was just that simple.

So, my graduate studies were off to a flying start, and I plunged into them with a renewed sense of optimism about my future as a journalist. In short, it was by far the most important B+ I ever received.