The Daily Chronicle from De Kalb, Illinois • Page 35

DEKALB COUNTY WEEKLY, III. Wdnday, May 26, 1 993 15 Sports journalist Murray Olderman is a Hall of Famer 1971. Then he was a contributing editor for 15 years. He still does special reports for NEA on pro football. "I think the thing I'm proudest of," says Olderman, "is in 1952, when I came to New York with NEA, I looked around and I recognized that pro football was going to become the most dynamic sport.

By Howard Siner NEW YORK (NEA) Murray Olderman says that during his Hall of Fame career as a journalist he watched sports in America turn into a big business. But he still enjoys seeing great athletes do what they do best. Olderman, 71, will be inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame on Monday, April 26. He covered sports for Newspaper Enterprise Association from 1952 until 1987. "Jimmy Cannon used to call it the toy department of journalism," Older-man says.

"Then Howard Cosell came along years later and said sports is a microcosm of society. I think Cosell is closer to the truth." A former ABC-TV sportscaster, is also a 1993 inductee into the NSSA Hall of Fame, which is located in Salisbury, N.C. (about 35 miles northeast of Charlotte). Cannon, who was a noted sportswriter, was inducted in 1986. monies will be sportscaster Marty Glickman.

Grantland Rice, known as the "Father of American Sportswriting," was the first inductee in 1962. "I never patterned myself after any body," says Olderman, about his own work as a syndicated columnist. "I'm sure I was influenced subtly by different guys. But I was guided by the principles of good journalism." NEA distributes copy to more than 600 U.S. daily newspapers.

"Murray probably had the widest circulation of any sportswriter in America," says Furman Bisher, a columnist for the Atlanta Journal. "He filled in a lot of gaps for a lot of us who didn't get to do the things he did." Bisher, who became a NSSA Hall of Famer in 1989, will take part in the ceremony honoring Olderman, who is also an award-winning sports cartoonist. "He's a double-barreled prospect for the Hall of Fame," says Bisher. Olderman became sports editor of NEA in 1964. He was the executive editor of the syndicate from 1968 to The NEA veteran is being honored by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.

nalism, 1943) and Stanford University (humanities, 1944). He earned a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern in 1947. Before joining NEA, Olderman worked as a sports cartoonist and feature writer for the McClatchy Newspapers in Sacramento, Calif. (1947-51); and for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune (1951-52). He has written 11 books and his NEA features have been included in several editions of the annual series "Best Sports Stories." Olderman has taught journalism courses at San Francisco State, the University of Redlands (Calif.) and the University of Oregon.

He praises the current generation of sportswriters. "They're less reverent, which is not bad," he says. "They're smarter. You have fewer hacks. The suburban newspapers are so strong nowadays that the writing on them is just as good as it is on metropolitan newspapers." He points to Jim Brown and Willie Mays as perhaps the greatest athletes of his era.

But Olderman says that, like other sportswriters, he outgrew any trace of hero worship after seeing big-time sports from the inside. "It didn't dull my interest," he says. "It gave me a different perspective. But I still admire the contests and the games." 01993 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN. In 1955, Olderman founded NEA's Jim Thorpe Trophy, which was the original most valuable player award in the National Football League.

Olderman cites the landmark 1958 NFL championship game the Baltimore Colts edged the New York Giants, 23-17, in overtime as one of his top memories. The contest is credited with boosting the popularity of pro football. Since then, Olderman has become one of the few journalists to have covered nearly every Super Bowl. He's missed only SB IX in 1975. For a distinguished career, Older-man was honored in 1979 by the Pro Football Writers Association (the McCann Trophy); and in 1991 by the (college) Football Writers Association of America (the McGrane Award).

"Sports isn't any different than news or business in the general approach to covering it," says Olderman. "It's more dramatic. It's more exciting. It changes more from day to day. But the same principles, in general, should apply to sportswriting." Sports columnist Ira Berkow of The New York Times says he learned many of those basics while working at NEA with Olderman in the late 1960s.

Berkow recalls: "A guy once said to me that working for Murray Olderman is like going to Yale. It's true. It was an education on many levels how to get a story, how to write a story, what is a story. "I always thought that Murray was a brilliant person. He's one of the few Phi Beta Kappas in the sportswriting business.

Even though it was sometimes hard working for him it was demanding in the end, it was rewarding." Olderman holds bachelor's degrees from the University of Missouri (jour "So I hopped right on the bandwagon. I was an early advocate of pro football as a sport to cover, as a sport that was going to take root and gain popularity. And it has." Murray Olderman The other participant in the 34th annual NSSA Hall of Fame cere The povertylow-IQ connection rion-referenced tests, the kind students have always taken to see if they have mastered the material taught. We also need to learn what can be done to assist families especially low-income black families to adopt and incorporate some of the Asian family values and to develop an educational system that educates low-income minorities as productively as middle- and upper-income whites. Until we do that, the only thing we will produce as we head into the 21st century is a lost generation of academic failures.

C1993 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN. tect of the theory of genetic supremacy, would have a field day with that correlation. Actually, something is radically wrong with an educational system that perpetuates such a horrible inequity. That is why I propose that all standardized or norm-referenced tests below the secondary school level be abolished for eight years. The only value of a standardized test is that it enables parents to compare New York with New Mexico and New Jersey.

Period. Instead, students would go through the first eight grades with only crite lit i 1 lii! Ill 1t t. f- ilfi If is CJUJC Now, a year later, Michigan is back with another study that its researchers claim proves that "persistent poverty" is the primary cause of IQ deficits. I say "claim," because kids from lower-income refugee Asian families are still mathematically kicking the cognitive butts of all middle-income kids white or black in the public school system. "Family income," says the University of Michigan's Greg J.

Duncan, "is a far more powerful correlate of a child's IQ at age 5 than maternal education, ethnicity and growing up in a single-parent family." At age 5, there is a 9.1 spread in IQ points between "persistently poor" kids and middle-income kids. The researchers also found that "persistently poor" kids catch hell with all kinds of anxieties and stress (fear, depression, moodiness), all of which lower their grades. I've got a radical proposal to counteract this educational crisis. Before presenting it, however, let me leave you with one statistic that you have never read anywhere else, because it is so inflammatorily controversial. According to a table published by the Educational Testing Service, SAT scores correlate very highly with median family income: The higher the income, the higher the scores; the lower the income, the lower the scores.

Yet, white kids whose median family incomes are below $10,000 still score higher on the SATs than black kids whose median family incomes are above $50,000. Arthur Jensen, archi- By Chuck Stone What this country's educational system needs is a classic textbook that replaces "The Education of Henry Adams" with "The Education of Conservatives." "The Education of Conservatives" would begin with a just-released study that shows a strong correlation between poverty and IQ. Why aren't we surprised? Well, we've always known that on the average (and those three words are pivotal) rich kids have higher IQs than poor kids, white kids have higher IQs than black kids, Asian kids score higher than white kids on standardized math tests and the mother's educational level has more impact on IQ than anything else. But a just-released study by the University of Michigan challenges all of that conventional wisdom. First, however, I must take note of the high-quality educational research that consistently comes out of the University of Michigan.

Last year, the university published a study showing that children of Southeast Asian boat people were excelling in the American public school system. Paradoxically, kids from Indochi-nese refugee families who had arrived in this country only a few years ago are surpassing the achievement levels of kids born to third-generation Americans. I wrote about this educational paradox, and several of you either wrote or telephoned for information about 'getting a copy" of the study. Our lease deals are going to make a believer out of you INTRODUCING THE TOYOTA CAMRY LE LEASE. ONLY $289 A MONTH.

42 MONTHS. PAY ONLY A $325 REFUNDABLE DEPOSIT AND YOUR FIRST MONTH'S PAYMENT UPON SIGNING. AND NO DOWN PAYMENT Speech code for insensitive professors be deterred anyhow, as people stay far, far away from the danger zone." This policing of faculty speech is not happening at a rigidly sectarian college but at one of the nation's more distinguished public universities. lt, m.rij; ft" rlMUmn 1111 iumwwiri Lr at' MriiMBtBiasa 1 -11ii i mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmml "73 NAT IS?" HENTOFF V' TOYOTA CAMRY LUXURY EDITION FEATURING: AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION AIR CONDITIONING AMFM STEREO-CASSETTE 4 SPEAKERS POWER WINDOWS DRIVER-SIDE AIR BAG POWER DOOR LOCKS CRUISE CONTROL By Nat Hentoff In September 1989, Federal District Judge Avern Cohn thumpingly declared the University of Michigan's speech code for students unconstitutional. Intended to prevent a hostile learning atmosphere on campus for women, blacks, gays and lesbians or the handicapped, the policy punished both verbal and physical "discriminatory harassment." Judge Cohn had no problem with the section on physical harassment but ruled that the prohibition of offensive language was too vague, overly broad and indeed offensive to the First Amendment.

The university's administration refused to be entirely deterred from its civilizing mission. There is in ominous place at the University of Michigan an "Interim Policy on Discriminatory Harassment by Faculty and Staff in the University Environment." To my knowledge, this is the only college or university speech code in the country directed solely at faculty and staff in their contact with students. Until now, college policing of language has focused on insensitive students. And that is why according to Elsa Cole, the university's general counsel it is only fair that the faculty should now finally be accountable for what they say that might offend. However, I have spoken to a number of University of Michigan faculty friembers who do not appreciate the kind of equality that inhibits their freedom of speech.

Yet many of them only murmur in dissent. The language of this faculty speech code is just as vague and overbroad as the yoke from which students at the University of Michigan were liberated in 1989. At issue is discriminatory speech based on "race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex. sexual orientation, ancestry, age, marital status, handicap or Vietnam-era veteran status." Subject to disciplinary tribunals is language in those categories and here is the chilling impact that "has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment for academic pursuits, employment, housing, or participation in a university activity." There are no further definitions of "intimidating," "hostile" or "offensive." As one Michigan law school professor, Robert Harris, told me, he fears that this "censorship regime" will result in "a large 'penumbra of Much conduct that is not outlawed by this policy though who can tell what is and what isn't will Limited time offer, see your Toyota dealer today. Well, maybe not always.

Why would so important a university insist on casting a pall of verbal orthodoxy over the faculty? A member of that faculty provides a convincing explanation: "What we see in this censorship proposal is a bowing to the wishes ol a collection of groups, all of whom have been socially oppressed historically or recently, or ethnic minorities, women, gays, the handicapped. "What they are to get under this proposal is censorship of faculty and staff, with faculty and staff to be disciplined by their employer if, in talking or writing, they ever say anything that is offensive to these specially protected groups. This measure goes far beyond the traditional use of government force to give the oppressed equal opportunity or a preference in hiring or admissions or housing." Recently, the faculty senate met to reconsider this perilous policy. Only a few wanted to scrap it entirely and instead have no policy at all punishing speech. The rest decided to appoint a committee to either revise it or present a new policy that would provide, as one of those at the meeting said to me, "clear protection for the classroom.

If a professor says anything that is clearly part of an intellectual discussion, he or she would be protected." Who decides what "clearly" means in the context of acute group sensitivities to certain words and turns of phrase? It is instructive that only a few University of Michigan professors seem to realize the snares in any written policy that purports to separate good speech from bad. As the president of another college told me recently, "Courage to speak out in dissent against such proposals is in limited supply these days among professors, including those who are tenured and I always thought the purpose of tenure was to give courage to professors. They have become some role models!" Not Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. life love what you do for me! TOYOTA The Superstore in Sycamore fl WIlIE Rt-23 Bethany Rd- (815) ob-obbl DEKALB 1 1 -I- Lg mm sales nUUna: vain 10 opm, oaturaay am iu a pm PONTIAC SERVICE HOURS: 8am to 6 pm TOYOTA 42-Month Closed-End Lease. FIRST MONTH'S PAYMENT OF $288.92 $325 REFUNDABLE SECURITY DEPOSIT OR RECONDITIONING RESERVE DUE AT LEASE SIGNING.

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