Mitchell spoke in the Honors College chapel Feb. 13 and will speak in communications classes today, before attending a dinner with Communication Department members tonight. The seminar tomorrow is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and features four lectures from Mitchell about being a reporter, an investigative journalist, writing a book and writing a screenplay. April Fatula, faculty adviser for The Bison and Petit Jean, coordinated the seminar and said her idea was to focus on press freedom and media literacy.
“I think maybe making it a little broader for writing is appealing to a wider group of students,” Fatula said. “So I’m glad that we’re doing that.”
The idea for the seminar began when senior Nic Fraraccio, the editor-in-chief of The Bison last semester, asked Fatula to write a retrospective piece for the centennial year of the paper.
“I reached out to Jerry because… he just is really the embodiment of a Harding Department of Communication [and] journalism alum, and he was very involved in The Bison in his time as a student,” Fatula said.
Mitchell worked for The Bison from 1979-1982 as a news editor and wrote “Fifth Column,” a satirical column about life at Harding, which was later renamed to “From the inside looking out.” He became an investigative journalist, and his career includes writing Race Against Time, being a Pulitzer Prize finalist, receiving over 30 national awards and a MacArthur “genius” grant.
Mitchell’s work led to the convictions of four Ku Klux Klansmen in the assassination of Medgar Evers, bombing of a Birmingham church, and the deaths of James Chaney, Andy Goodman and Mickey Schwerner and the conviction of serial killer Felix Vail.
Mitchell asked Fatula if The Bison was doing anything to celebrate the anniversary, and that question started the planning of what evolved into this weekend’s seminar. Fatula said she wanted Mitchell to speak because of his message of justice and mercy and how he interacts with students. Fatula and some of The Bison staff recently heard Mitchell speak at the national College Media Association conference in New Orleans last semester.
“We come from a similar worldview and faith background, but his message was also really well received at that conference,” Fatula said. “And those are not all students who share that same faith background and maybe don’t come at the concept of justice and mercy the same way that we do as Christians.”
Mitchell said believing in truth is one of the beauties of being a Christian because we can’t have justice until we have the truth. He also said that throughout his career, his faith deepened as he saw how God worked to establish truth and justice.
“God’s hand was involved in all of that, all those cases I worked on, no question in my mind,” Mitchell said. “After the conviction in the Dahmer case, I just dove into the Bible and started looking at ‘Okay, what does God think about justice, you know, what does he say about justice,’ and just looked at all the scriptures.”
Fraraccio said he first heard Mitchell speak during his freshman communications class with Dr. Jim Miller. He heard Mitchell speak and met Mitchell at the conference with Fatula last semester.
“Whenever I heard that I was getting to not only hear him speak but get to meet him again, I was super excited just because this is a guy where journalism kind of collided with a different type of field that we usually don’t see, which is more like investigative and also just involvement with the police,” Fraraccio said.
