April 2001

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Jock Lauterer brings more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, author, photographer and teacher to the School, where he teaches newswriting and community journalism.
 

Jock-of-all-trades returns to Carolina

Lauterer 'hog wild' to rejoin School

Photo by Maricarmen Josephs

Carroll Hall's newest faculty member brings with him more than 30 years of experience as a journalist, author, photographer and teacher, not to mention a real passion for Carolina.

"I’m hog wild to be back in blue heaven," said Jock Lauterer, a Chapel Hill native and a 1967 graduate of the University. Lauterer returned to his alma mater in January after nine and a half years teaching as an associate professor of journalism in the College of Communications at Penn State University.

This semester, Lauterer is teaching news writing and a new community journalism class in which students explore the dynamics of small papers — the largest with a daily circulation of 50,000.

"Small papers make up 9,451 of the 9,698 papers in the nation," said Lauterer. "In North Carolina, 83 percent of the newspapers are small."

Lauterer said that in the nine-person pro-seminar, students use small newspapers, including those from their hometowns, as a "benchmark to examine content relative for the week." If the topic for the week is the editorial page, students will analyze each paper’s approach to that section of the paper.

"The push of the class is to get kids to realize that just because a paper is small, it isn’t dinky," said Lauterer.

Lauterer also is busy serving as director of the Carolina Community Media Project. Launched in September 1999 and based in the School, the project is designed to research and teach community journalism, and to serve as an outreach to community newspapers. It provides an opportunity for those involved to go out and lead workshops at local papers. The project also is associated with the Carolina Center for Public Service.

Lauterer said he and his wife, Lynne Vernon-Feagans, were excited about the opportunity to return to Chapel Hill. Vernon-Feagans is the newly appointed William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Child Development and Family Studies at the UNC-CH School of Education and the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center.

"We had always dreamt about coming back to Carolina," Lauterer said.

Before working at Penn State, Lauterer spent 15 years as co-founder, publisher and editor of two N.C. newspapers, the McDowell Express in Marion and the Daily Courier in Forest City. In the mid-1980s, he taught photojournalism at the School for three years and subsequently designed the journalism program at Brevard College.

Lauterer has also authored six books: Only in Chapel Hill, Wouldn’t Take Nothin’ For My Journey Now, Running on the Rims, Hogwild: A Back-to-the-Land Saga, a textbook titled Community Journalism: The Personal Approach and a Community Journalism Instructor’s Manual. Underscoring his wide range of talents, each of the books also features Lauterer's own photography.

"I am really a photographer more than anything else," he said.

Suzanne Buchanan is a junior in the public relations sequence.