Remarks delivered by UConn Journalism Professor in Residence Gail MacDonald on May 1, 2025 during the department's annual scholarship awards ceremony.

First, let me congratulate all the student award recipients. You are truly the promise of a great future for journalism.

Most of you here this evening know the love I have for journalism. I’ve practiced it professionally since I began my first newspaper reporting job at age 19. For many years, I also had the privilege of working full time with students, with whom I hope I helped spark this same love of journalism. I retired from my full-time position here at UCONN on Jan. 1.

While most of you know me as a journalist and journalism instructor, fewer of you may be aware of a second love of mine - history. I’ve written two local history books and am now researching and writing a book focusing on 19th century Black abolitionists and activists from New England and New York.

I have this photo of Frederick Douglass here because, although a detailed profile of him is not included in my book, most of you are likely familiar with him. He was one of the few historic Black figures most of us learned about in school.

But are you familiar at all with these people who will be included in my book?

John Brown Russwurm, who lived for many years in Maine and was the first Black graduate from Bowdoin college. In 1827, he helped establish the country’s first Black-run newspaper, an abolitionist paper called Freedom’s Journal.

William Cooper Nell of Boston, who as a teenager stood outside in a snowstorm watching a group of men inside a Boston meeting house as they formed an anti-slavery organization. He worked for 35 years for the country’s foremost abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which was put out by William Lloyd Garrison.

David Ruggles, who grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, then moved to Manhattan where he regularly prowled the city’s wharves in search of escaping slaves he could help to safety. It was Ruggles who first helped Frederick Douglass establish himself as a self-emancipated free man. Ruggles also wrote and published in 1835 a controversial pamphlet that unabashedly pointed out how the regular sexual violence slave owners imposed on their enslaved women violated the seventh commandment.

Pelleman Williams, who married Mary Harris of Norwich and moved his family to New Orleans during the height of the Civil War to help educate newly freed slaves and establish the first college for Blacks in that city. In 1865, he and a group of other Black residents established The Black Republican, a newspaper by and for the city’s residents of color. The paper served both as an important vehicle for information about the Black community and as a means to encourage literacy.

These are just a few of the untiring and courageous men and women I’ve come to learn about in my research over the past months. I’ve also come to understand that, although these individuals whose accomplishments in the face of enormous odds are so deserving of our knowledge and understanding, instead their lives were nearly erased from our history for many decades.

In many cases, what led them to be rediscovered, at least by some educators and historians and people such as myself, is the power of the written word. Many were journalists themselves, for example, as I’ve already pointed out.

But also there was another group who aided mightily in helping spread public knowledge about them and also is helping my research. Those are the journalists who have written about these people through the years. They strove to inform and educate the public with the truth and, in the process, keep the legacies and achievements of these people alive.

And that is what now raises some concerns for me. Currently, our profession is under attack as never before and I wonder whether future researchers such as myself will be aided by the enlightening work of journalists? As newsrooms shrink, the number of news deserts grows and corporate owners turn their backs on journalistic responsibilities, will journalism continue to produce the so-called “first rough draft of history,” as former Washington Post publisher Donald Graham (or maybe it was another sage newspaper person) is supposed to have said?

Our challenges also go beyond these. Journalists face a president who has called them and their mission to hold truth to power “enemies of the people.” He openly mocked a disabled reporter, barred an Associated Press reporter from the White House because the AP refused to bow to demands to call the body of water off western Florida the Gulf of America and is seeking ways to pull the license from CBS news because he didn’t like some of its coverage. Some segments of the media also regularly peddle lies and offer no evidence of being true to journalism’s most sacred responsibility to report the truth.

I know enough about history to understand that despite the entrenchment of Freedom of the Press in the constitution, there have been attempts to silence and censor the press since the earliest days of the country. There also are plenty of historic examples of some spectacular breaches of the public’s trust on the part of journalists - Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair come to mind.

For years I taught the Journalism Ethics course for this department. I enjoyed the classroom discussions about journalism’s ethical responsibilities: seek the truth and report it, minimize harm for our sources, be a voice for the voiceless, hold power accountable, be transparent about how we work and where we get our information, be a watchdog over government wrongdoing, and act independently.

It is heartening to see that, despite our shrinking numbers, contemporary journalists continue to produce some of the best work ever. Just a few examples are recent pieces enlightening the public about missing Black girls in Chicago, influence peddling at the Supreme Court, communities devastated by wildfires and flooding and the use of migrant child labor in the U.S. It is especially promising to see dedicated future journalists such as those here this evening, who I’m confident will strive to uphold the professional ethics and moral obligations of journalism.

But what about those people I’ve been researching? Some now in power would like to see them again be disappeared. Are we as journalists strong enough to fight back so future generations will learn a more balanced view of history in our elementary, middle and high school classrooms than I ever did? These people I’m researching deserve to be known, just as are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and countless white historical figures.

Harvard University’s president Alan Garber in a recent statement concerning that institution’s fight against heavy-handed governmental threats, had these words that I would also apply to the need to protect journalism and ensure it flourishes: “Freedom of thought and inquiry, along with the government’s longstanding commitment to respect and protect it, has enabled universities (and we might substitute “journalism” there) to contribute in vital ways to a free society and to healthier, more prosperous lives for people everywhere. All of us share a stake in safeguarding that freedom. We proceed now, as always, with the conviction that the fearless and unfettered pursuit of truth liberates humanity.”