Who Do Students Admire?

Five of us had lunch today with Jay Smith, the recently retired president of Cox Newspapers. Smith was in town to talk to a couple of classes at the Elliott School of Communication. Smith posed a couple of interesting questions. One that particularly struck me was: "Who do your students look up to?" Smith wasn't asking about celebrities, but about media mentors, specifically in journalism. Going to high school and college in the 1970s, my journalism heroes were broadcast giant Walter Cronkite and investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post, famous for their sleuthing in the Watergate crimes. In terms of literary models, my writing mentors ranged from Ernest Hemingway to Hunter S. Thompson, an admittedly wide net to cast. His query intrigued me because I have no clue what my own students would say if asked that question. Would they cite old-school journalists, broadcasters and advertising experts? Or would they throw out the names of unknown (to me) bloggers, Web site gurus and weirdo page designers. Well, I am just going to have ask them. Stay tuned. In the meantime, who are/were your mentors?