Now…Chancellor Woodson selection is news, good news on campus

Yesterday’s blog about the Chancellor Search sure raised lots of discussion.  Some claimed I was a genius, others a fool.  I claim neither, or either, because the discussion that followed was great.

Some of those outside the university thought I was unfair to the media.  They believed the paper was just doing it’s job.  Honestly, I don’t disagree with them. Today news happens at lightning speed and is reported even faster.   I just have a problem when the best you can do is four unnamed sources.  Guess that’s better than one or two unnamed sources, but if the news is so important that you banner it across the top of the front page of the paper, shouldn’t you at least have one source who is willing to fess up?  I think so, but then I’m not in the news business and I don’t have to sell newspapers everyday and compete against the likes of TMZ, Stossel, Facebook and Twitter.

But  a media critique was not the purpose of my blog.  I like the N&O and the reporters who cover our industry.  I was just trying to illustrate the difficult position those in university communications find themselves in when something like this happens.  My focus was the internal audience, us.

Sure, we all heard the rumors and saw the story.  We couldn’t refute it because we didn’t know if it was true or not.  But because the story was about a decision that only University of North Carolina President, Erskine Bowles, could make, only Erskine Bowles could confirm  and he hadn’t done that.  In fact, he was on record stating that he would not announce his recommendation until Friday (today.)

In our excitement (the news reported in the paper was really, really good) a couple of us posted blog, Facebook and Twitter links to the newspaper story, but in doing so, we provided additional cred to the report…a report we wouldn’t confirm…but couldn’t deny.  I’m not even going to try to decide whether that was good or bad it’s just what it was.

So there you have it.

Now we can all celebrate — out in the open –  because we know William “Randy” Woodson will be our new Chancellor and he’ll be starting work in early April (we hope.)  Randy has built a strong reputation as someone who understands the research, teaching, student, alumni, community, athletic and fundraising aspects of a major public land grant university like N.C. State.  He’s beloved by everyone at Purdue, and we’re fortunate he is joining the Wolfpack.

He’s someone who really gets it. And though I’ve only spent a few hours with him, I’m willing to bet that for Dr. Woodson, Chancellor Woodson,

Passion Rules!

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