Professor Mike Spear retires this month after 34 years in the journalism department at the University of Richmond. (Photo by Jay Paul)
It’s possible Mike Spear has awarded more F’s in his 34 years teaching journalism at the University of Richmond than any other professor in the history of the school. It’s also possible there is no other professor as beloved and admired by his students, despite all the F's.
The failing grade rarely comes as a surprise, as Spear’s list of “F words” is legendary, seared into the collective consciousness of all those who have sat in his copy editing and news writing classes over the years. Not just the list, but the list read aloud in Spear’s soft North Carolina accent, with its lilting cadence and frequent bursts of gentle laughter.
“I still hear his voice in my head,” says Christian Schaffer, a 1995 UR graduate and journalism major who is co-anchor on ABC2 News’ “Good Morning Maryland” in Baltimore. “Reading scripts before a newscast in the morning I am still thinking of [the F words]. … Now that I’m an anchor, I am in constant fear of someone catching me and calling me on it.”
Spear distributes his list of “F words” to his students at the beginning of each semester. The list hangs in his office and on all four walls of his classroom. On it are 10 common words that are among the most misspelled in the English language. “I will be inserting these words misspelled in assignments,” he explains. “If you don’t spell them correctly, you will earn an F.”
Then there are eight verboten words. Use them in a news story, or fail to delete them from editing assignments, and an F is yours. The list has evolved over the years and currently comprises: experience, individual, allege, facilitate, utilize, arguably, impactful and iconic. They’re words that are overused in journalism, longer and needlessly more complicated than their equivalents.
Good thing this writer is nearly 25 years removed from Spear’s classroom, because, as he retires from the University of Richmond this month at age 83, the word “iconic” seems best suited to describe his reputation as a teacher.
Though he’s taught nearly every class offered in UR’s journalism department, he is best known for copy editing, a class that involves rote memorization, grammatical nuance and arcane rules. Dry stuff.
“It is quite the experience to be in a Spear classroom,” says Tom Mullen, UR’s director of public affairs journalism. “He is high-energy, he is high-touch, and he is demanding. … He has high expectations, and he will help you to meet them.”
Chris Hamby, a 2008 graduate who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for investigative reporting, recalls Spear’s legendary enthusiasm. “He was always just so full of life,” Hamby says. “You could see his face light up when he would talk about news stories. You always got the sense that he felt like he had the greatest job in the world.”
Spear would agree. “There is something exhilarating about going into a classroom with young people who are eager to learn,” he says.
Spear taught his first class while he was a 45-year-old graduate student at the University of North Carolina in the early ’80s. When a dean learned he had 23 years of experience as a journalist, including 14 years in Europe writing and editing for the American military newspaper “Stars and Stripes,” he was invited to teach a class in feature writing. Though he initially had doubts about teaching, “when I walked in the classroom the very first day I knew intuitively that’s where I wanted to be,” he recalls. “You can just feel it.”
Born in 1935 during the Great Depression, Spear grew up in Madison, North Carolina, where his parents ran a weekly newspaper. He worked in the paper’s press room as a “printer’s devil” (apprentice) during the era of hot type and delivered the daily newspapers door to door. He was fascinated by the headlines he read during World War II, and he joined the Navy at age 17 so he could see the world. After three years in the Western Pacific he enrolled at Guilford College on the G.I. Bill and studied English.
Hours after he graduated from Guilford in 1960, Spear walked into the offices of the Greensboro Daily News and asked for a job, armed only with experience writing for the college’s literary magazine. He started the following Monday as a police reporter, making $64 a week. Journalism took him to Idaho and Texas, and to New Orleans, where he and his wife, Toby, lived for six years before moving to Europe to work for "Stars and Stripes."
In 1983, the University of Richmond decided to add a professor to its journalism department, which at the time, consisted of one full-time faculty member, Steve Nash. Nash recalls when Spear placed a foot-tall toucan figurine on his lectern for multiple classes, without comment. “He kept waiting for someone to ask about it,” Nash says, laughing. “He just wanted to illustrate the importance of being curious.” Explains Spear, “I don’t want them to be bored, and I don’t want to be bored. I’ve experimented with every kind of thing as a teacher.”
Spear’s own insatiable curiosity has served as his bedrock, whether he’s traveling the world, reading voraciously or delving into the lives of his students.
When asked about the legacy he will leave at UR, he laughs. “Legacy? I never thought about a legacy. I just hope I’ve helped some people do well in this world. … I’m just pleased that the kids get through here and learn something that’s important to them. It makes me happy. That’s good enough.”
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