Decline of the Press Worries News Veteran

Decline of the press worries news veteran
Journalists too chummy with political insiders

by ANTHONY DeMATTEO
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/080209/news_080209_042.shtml

Victor Ostrowidzki spent nearly three decades covering the world's most powerful people in print. Now, he worries newspapers might disappear, leaving a hole in information that can't be filled by other media.

"What happens if newspapers shut down?" said Ostrowidzki, director of the Forum on Government and Public Policy at Flagler College, where he teaches political science and journalism. "You can't rely on the radio or television for coverage. They don't have the resources. Anything that is happening in the community -- no one will know. If no one covers a meeting of the city commission, they can do almost anything."

Ostrowidzki covered seven presidents as a member of the White House Press Corps from 1966 through the mid-'90s. He started working as a copy boy for the Hearst chain in 1952 when he was a junior at Siena College, where he graduated in 1954 with a master's degree in political science and a bachelor's degree in journalism. He served three years in the Army, then returned to Hearst as a reporter in 1957.

Ostrowidzki teaches courses at Flagler on Congress and on media in the 21st century, reading scores of newspapers and magazines to keep up with the changing pulse of modern media.

He said layoffs at news organizations caused by shrinking advertising budgets and an explosion of outlets have contributed to a shortage of good political stories by American media.

"The coverage has become scant," he said. "The foreign bureaus have been shut down. There's no investigative reporting, or it's shrinking, and the government is getting away with murder."

Ostrowidzki said the media got away with something close to murder in its coverage of the 2008 Democratic Primary, calling what he saw as favoritism given now President Barack Obama over then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a "disgrace."

"I think Mrs. Clinton was shafted," he said. "It was so incredibly blatant that I was ashamed of what was going on. I think it is eventually going to haunt the media. The relationship between the political establishment and the media out to be adversarial, and it hasn't been, in most instances."

Another life

Ostrowidzki's office in Flagler College's Markland House features a poster with a sun-bleached signature of Poland's Solidarity Movement leader and future president, Lech Walesa. Propped on a nearby thermostat is a bumper sticker reading: "We Need A Polish President." In a closet sit stacks of laminated press passes that were Ostrowidzki's tickets to the world.

In 1979, Ostrowidzki accompanied Pope John Paul II to Poland when the pontiff famously kissed the ground of the two men's native country.

"In 1981, I went back to cover the solidarity of the people in Poland," Ostrowidzki said. "I was there until I was thrown out of the country on December 11, as persona non grata for series of articles entitled "Poland on Fire."

Two days later, Poland declared marshal law, arresting members of the solidarity movement.

Ostrowidzki returned to Poland with the pope in 1983 and 1986, and with President George H.W. Bush in 1989. On the third trip, he stayed in Eastern Europe to cover the collapse of communism in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

"I was in Berlin on the second day after the wall went down," he said.

Despite his passion for policy making, Ostrowidzki did not vote in presidential elections while covering the White House.

"I would spend a week with one candidate, spend a week with the other, then go on my own into a state and talk to about 100 people," he said.

But Ostrowidzki did have personal relationships with presidents. He was close to both President Lyndon B. Johnson and President Ronald Reagan.

After a serious car accident en route to Johnson's Texas ranch injured Ostrowidzki, his wife Rita, and their three children, Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, visited Rita in the hospital.

In a desk drawer, Ostrowidzki has a letter Reagan wrote him after Rita's death in 1988.

Ostrowidzki married his current wife, Sharon, in 1994.

Hearst News Service Washington Bureau Senior Editor Charles Lewis said last week that when Ostrowidzki covered the legislature in Albany, N.Y., his skills were slightly notorious.

"The old joke was, when your basic New York State legislator came back from lunch, the worst thing in the world was finding a pink slip saying, 'Victor Ostrowidzki called,'" Lewis said.

Lewis said Ostrowidzki approached journalism from a perspective often rare among reporters.

"Victor is a terrific reporter because he is asking questions as though the person he's interviewing knows more about the subject than Victor does," Lewis said. "After people have been in the business a while, especially those covering Washington, they think they know better. Victor is a terrific listener."

Lewis said Ostrowidzki returns to Washington, sometimes for correspondents functions, where he often recruits journalists to appear at the Flagler Forums.

Holly Hill, Flagler College's Assistant Director of College Relations, works with Ostrowidzki in Markland House.

"He brings so many people to the forums whom the college and the community would never see without his influence," Hill said. "We don't get to see him as much as we'd like because he is so active."

After a lifetime of working with some of the world's most visible people, Ostrowidzki said he is right where he wants to be.

"I'm having the time of my life," he said. "I've always wanted to teach."


At a glance

During the Soviet occupation of Poland, Ostrowidzki's father, an officer in the Polish Police Force, was interred in Lithuania before being moved to a Russian P.O.W. camp. While Ostrowidzki visited his aunt during Christmas of 1939, Ostrowidzki's mother, brother and grandfather were deported to Siberia. Ostrowidzki was 7. His father and mother eventually got out of Russia.

"I escaped from Poland in '47 after the war, to Sweden, and reunited with my parents in England in '48," Ostrowidzki said.

Ostrowidzki and his family came to America in 1950 under a special act of Congress.