We’ll Laugh Again, Says Art Buchwald in Return to USC
Photo by Irene Fertik
"We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again," said Buchwald, who spoke as part of the "@Annenberg" lecture series in the midst of a one-week writer-in-residence appointment at the Annenberg School of Journalism. "This is the toughest time I have ever lived through."
But Buchwald, 76, drew chuckles when asked about his years as a liberal arts student at USC from 1945 to 1948. He served as managing editor of the campus humor magazine, Wampus, and wrote a column for the Daily Trojan.
"I didn’t have to work at a degree," Buchwald said. "They wouldn’t let me … because I didn’t have a high school diploma." Buchwald received an honorary doctorate in literature from USC in 1993.
Buchwald also drew laughs when he told how he got his first newspaper job in Paris, at the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune.
"In 1949 I went down to the Herald Tribune, and said I would like to have column about food-tasting and restaurant reviews," Buchwald said. "The managing editor said, ‘We don’t have such a column, and if we did, you couldn’t do it. Get the hell out of here.’"
Buchwald didn’t give up. When the managing editor was out of town, Buchwald approached another editor and landed a job writing columns that "made fun of the international set."
Annenberg Dean Geoffrey Cowan and Michael Parks, interim director of the journalism school, introduced Buchwald, whose syndicated column appears in virtually every major newspaper in the world. Buchwald won a Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1982.
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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