Alumni Visits

Wednesday October 16, 2013 Ernie Suggs Alumni of North Carolina Central University and reporter for Atlanta Journal- Constitution came to speak with the Mass Communication department.

Mr. Suggs came to visit NCCU during its homecoming and spoke to students about how he became the reporter that he is today. Suggs spoke on how he started his path in professional journalism here at NCCU working with the Campus Echo. Suggs explained that his passion for writing is what drove him to dedicate his time writing and publishing stories for the Echo. He told us how he applied for an internship with the National Association of Black journalist. After being accepted he went off to New York to work for Gannett Westchester newspaper coving the Yankees.

Graduating NCCU in 1990 Mr. Suggs went back to New York where he had a job waiting for him at Gannett Newspaper. Working for two year at Gannett he moved back to Durham NC to work for the Herald Sun Newspaper as a reporter. In 1996 Suggs was awarded a fellowship with the Education Writers Association for his work covering NCCU. This landed Suggs a job traveling the south to do a series of stores covering HBCU's.

Being very active in the National Association of Black Journalist Suggs became too organization vice president in 2005. Three year later Suggs was one of twenty-nine people, two who were black to be selected worldwide to become a Niemen Fellow at Harvard University. When Suggs graduated from Harvard University he was named to the Niemen Foundation's Advisory Board.

Chambers Class

The Rise in Textbook Costs

The Rise in Textbook Costs

        Students all over North Carolina Central University campus are complaining about the
rise in text book cost. Should textbooks be included in the in the cost of the course being that the
cost of tuition is also on the rise? Are there cheaper alternatives to buying textbooks if so how
much cheaper.
        Malcolm Elliot junior at NCCU say “the price of textbooks are sky rocketing, but new
technologies have given us cheaper alternatives such as e-books, and buying or renting books off
site such as amazon.com for almost half the price of the books sold by the university.”
Other students at NCCU weren’t afraid to disagree with Malcolm’s views. Sylvia Blank
sophomore at NCCU said “there are risks to buying e-books and hard copies off different sites.
The software on your tablet or PC could crash and your e-book would be useless or a site like
chegg.com could send the wrong book or the book may have missing pages. The biggest issue of
all they may not offer the exact book we need because central have their own copies of certain
text for example the plazas Spanish book.”
       Matthew Ferante said “with tuition on the rise and textbooks on the rise it seems that
NCCU is designed to accumulate more dept for their students. NCCU should include the cost of
books into the cost of the course instead of it coming out of our loans. What about students who
don’t receive a lot of financial aid, and live off-Campus, they have to pay for housing, books,
food, gas, and car repairs.
       Blair Ingram junior at NCCU said “we as students have no say so on the rise in textbook
cost. Teachers demand that we have the books for our courses, they are critical towards our
grades. This comes down to if we want to do well in school were going to get the required
textbooks regardless the cost.”

Mr. Chambers Mass Media & Society's class.

when i first entered the Mass Communications department i was unclear to what i wanted to do with it. After spending half of a semester i started to understand the business side of the media world. Being a former business major i see myself working behind the scenes in the broadcasting industry. Before i changed my major i had a talk with Mrs. Sexton in the career service department she told me "there is a business in everything, find what you love to do and learn the business."

I honestly i don't know what i will take from Mr. Chambers Mass media and society class but i hope I'm able to find my hustle. I also hope to build a strong network, I learned that you cant succeed without the help of someone else. I plan to work with audionet in the upcoming semester to get some hands on experience in a radio station. The only thing i feel that hold me back is fear to try new things and meeting new people. Hopefully i'm able to breakout my shell and try something i never did before who knows what may happen.

Chambers Class