Alumni give back to Cal Poly students
NBC News veterans, from left, Nina Zacuto (Journalism, ’70), George Lewis and Cecilia Alvear share their experiences with students in a broadcast newswriting class.
By Will Peischel, journalism senior
Two campus visits last spring featuring acclaimed alumni provided journalism students unique insights into the worlds of hard news, music journalism and the music industry.
Nina Zacuto (Journalism ’70) visited campus on April 15, in part to honor the late Cal Poly Journalism Department chair George Ramos and in part to share her experiences with students in broadcasting and global communication classes. Accompanying her were NBC News colleagues, Cecilia Alvear and George Lewis.
Zacuto worked in broadcast news for more than three decades, spending 25 of those years as an NBC News producer in the Burbank bureau. Her career spanned coverage of the Michael Jackson trial – during which she facilitated the use of Cal Poly students as interns – three Olympics, Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign and the trial of the Unabomber.
Alvear, who began her career as a producer in the 1970s, covered wars that plagued Central America through the 1980s, and focused on California stories, which included the OJ Simpson trial in the 1990s. However, she told students, an interview she produced with Fidel Castro is likely the largest jewel of her career.
NBC News correspondent Lewis covered several major global events of the late 20th century. He was one of the last Americans to leave Saigon as the city fell to North Vietnamese forces in 1975. He was there during the Tehran hostage crisis, wars in Central America and the first Gulf War. Lewis and Zacuto produced a series in the 1990s called “Almost 2001,” chronicling the acceleration of technology.
A few weeks after the NBC guests visited campus, Bruce Flohr (Journalism ’89) and Stacey Anderson (Journalism ’06), two former KCPR general managers, shared with the students their insider views of the music industry and music journalism.
Flohr is an executive at Red Light Management, which works with notable bands like Interpol, Alabama Shakes, Phish and Ben Harper. Anderson writes about music and popular culture for the New York Times. Flohr spent one-on-one time with KCPR-FM disc jockeys, coaching them on their on-air presence during their shows. He then treated Anderson and a dozen KCPR-FM staff members to dinner.
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That night, Anderson gave a presentation to a room of journalism students and KCPR disc jockeys about the cutthroat path to making it as a millennial in the Big Apple. She focused on the sexism that plagues newsrooms even today and the persistence it took to break into a career.
Most recently, Flohr was the featured speaker at the combined Fall Commencement ceremonies for the College of Liberal Arts and the Orfalea College of Business.