From CBS to C-ville

Wyatt Andrews has some advice for dealing with authority figures.

“When you see someone in power,” he says, “you need to question them and question them hard.”

Andrews (Foreign Affairs ’74), a top CBS News correspondent turned U.Va. instructor, shared this advice during a lecture with the 70 students in his inaugural media studies course, “Journalism and the Media.”

The idea for the class was born during a conversation last fall between Andrews and Dean Ed Ayers. Andrews, who has a son and daughter attending U.Va., was lamenting that a limited number of media courses were available to students. So Dean Ayers made Andrews an offer he couldn’t refuse: Why don’t you teach a media course in the spring?

When the University comes calling, Andrews rarely says no. He served for six years on the Alumni Council Arts & Sciences (now the College Foundation) and also delivered the valediction speech to graduates in 1997. And that’s not all. “For years there was a career forum, in the late 80s and early 90s, so I’ve come to the campus to speak to various groups since returning from overseas in ’88.”

Why the long-standing dedication to his alma mater? “I am very interested in maintaining excellence at the University,” he says.

Since leaving U.Va., Andrews has excelled as a journalist, winning Emmy Awards for his coverage of three groundbreaking news stories: the assassination of Indira Gandhi; the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik, Iceland; and the tracking and arrest of two Washington, D.C.-area snipers. He is currently a national news correspondent for CBS, working primarily for the CBS Evening News.

So how does this news hound fare as an instructor at U.Va.? “I am the rawest rookie you can possibly imagine!” he says candidly.

Even so, he had his students’ undivided attention as he imparted the sort of wisdom only a seasoned journalist can provide. The subject of one of his lectures last spring was bias in the media and how to detect it. Andrews wanted his students to learn how to filter out the nonsense.

“This generation of students absorbs so much on a daily basis,” he says. “We are now in a period of instantaneous news compared to when my generation was in college.” His advice? “Have your skeptical antenna up.”

In addition to learning how to be savvy news consumers, Andrews and his students discussed why big media, like network news and newspapers, are losing audiences and what the differences are between big broadcast news and cable news. “I am reminded that most students are getting their news not from broadcast news,” he says, “but from other sources.”

How do today’s students compare to those during his heyday at U.Va.? “I have been very pleasantly surprised at how challenging they can be and how thoughtful they are. When they come prepared, they are formidable.”

Andrews is a firm believer in media studies and calls it the “new liberal arts of this millennium.” Andrews has no plans to return to the classroom this fall, but he hopes that media studies will continue to thrive at U.Va. “There is a waiting list for media studies,” he says. “Whether it’s me or another professor, it’s something that needs to go on the list of College priorities.”