It's Magic...

As usual, the State of Washington was in dire financial straits.  And so they were taking it out on the education system.  In fact, the School of Communications at the University of Washington was on the chopping block.  UW came to the professional community and asked a group of us to help put together a year-long certificate program to fill the need…and pay for itself.

We were just entering the 1990’s and the tech revolution was nothing more than a gleam in the eyes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.  A program was fashioned to fill the gap after undergrad and to help those wanting to make a career of communications be on the cutting edge of the business.

It was then that I was first invited to teach.  My previous experience did not really apply since I had taught recruits in the army how to fire a 105 mm howitzer cannon without losing a body part and I hadn’t thought about teaching in college until the opportunity presented itself.  I liked the idea that we could take a practical view in our classes.  A teacher friend said “Just talk about what you’re doing every day and how you do it.”  So I did.

That’s where we get to point of this essay.  It’s been twenty years since we started that program and the front page of today’s newspaper immediately brought back those memories.  I had followed Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s career since he played in the Big Ten for Michigan State.  The day that he announced he had the HIV virus was a tremendous shock to the sporting world.

I came to class that evening prepared to stick to the syllabus but the students just wouldn’t stop talking about it.  Magic’s news conference took a lot of courage.  We knew relatively little about this disease that was only beginning to ravage the world.  It seemed to be a death sentence at the time.  We just knew that we would have to watch him wither away.

Thank goodness that didn’t happen.  Magic is healthy and very much alive twenty years later.  But on that day, the students wanted to know how he could make such a public announcement of his condition.  What would this do to his career?  Would other players even want to be on the court with him?  Would it change the game of basketball?

The practical nature of our classes was embodied in that discussion.  Communicating with the public through the traditional media was still our primary focus.  CNN was a decade old.  Entertainment Tonight and Inside Edition were still in their infancy.  But cable television was leading the charge.  Think how the social media would have responded to that announcement, if made today.  In a much more jaded way, I’m sure.

I think Magic did the right thing…for the right reasons.  I said that back then and the students came to the same conclusion.  We used Magic as a case study in communicating for the next two weeks.  It came down to telling the truth and telling it immediately.  In the last couple of years, the number of public figures who have NOT followed that approach is astounding.  You’d think we would learn.  Here’s to a long life for Magic Johnson.  He’s been a role model for all of us.