JIM DEXTER
Then:Medill, BSJ, 1972; Northwestern Daily reporter, covered Project Survival
Now:
Senior Writer, CNN
Jim was one of the Northwestern Daily reporters assigned to cover Project Survival. Some of his NU Daily articles can be found on the Northwestern Library Archives Project Survival web pages.
Jim shared his thoughts in an e-mail:
"In 1970, I was just learning the business of writing and reporting, and quite frankly, the environment beat was something I was doing to learn how to become a reporter. So much was going on at that time, it's only after the perspective of years that I can truly see I was present at the creation of something that turned out to be very important, very significant.
I do remember covering the all-night teach-in at Tech Auditorium. I stayed all night, and I don't remember getting sleepy. Maybe that was just the energy of youth, or maybe there was just something very stimulating about the notion of changing the world.
Your (e-mail) message encouraged me to get out of a copy of the story I wrote after the teach-in. I was struck by Barry Commoner's prediction that without radical action, the earth would be uninhabitable in 30 years. 40 years later, we're still getting by, more or less. Was Commoner's prediction a little too extreme? Maybe. Or maybe the movement that was being hatched at Northwestern and other places in 1970 is exactly what helped us avoid Commoner's worst-case scenario."