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The Media School Report

March 31, 2016

Friends, colleagues and former students share their thoughts upon the death of John Ahlhauser:

Trevor Brown, former dean, IU School of Journalism

John Ahlhauser came to IU in 1973 to pursue his prophecy that news delivery would be electronic and stayed to become one of the School of Journalism’s most beloved professors. His dedication to photojournalism straddled the profession and academe throughout his career; as member and president of NPPA and in workshops and classes, he inspired professionals and students to refine their talent and practice their craft and art responsibly and ethically. John was a citizen of town and gown who in his humane and gentle way cared for all of us.

Tim Dohrer, BA’90

I was lucky to have professor Ahlhauser and professor Counts just before they retired. I agree with all the comments about Professor Ahlhauser’s wit, intellect, passion and gentleness. I felt so welcomed in his class, and he became a great model for me as I studied to become a journalism teacher.

Melissa Farlow, BA’74

I was a student when he came. He was an older student and we knew he was different but didn’t realize his gifts.

He and Will Counts worked together as a team, and it was an incredible influence on students there at that time.

John was a professional who had been working in field, so there was an immediacy to his knowledge.

He was talking about electronic newspapers, and we all thought sounded nuts. We were all focused on the present and what we thought world was always going to be. I don’t know why he had this vision. He wasn’t someone who was a technology geek. He was more of just a real human being. At the time, we kind of thought he was a little crazy, but he was right and way ahead of his time.

Bill Foley, ’77, BA’07

John Ahlhauser was an amazing human being on so many levels, and he was so amazingly good to his students in terms of helping us with our work and helping us find our way in the world.

The combination of Will Counts and John Ahlhauser, their teaching habits and their characters was amazing. They complemented each other and gave everything they had to the students.

Students benefitted from their advice.

Those guys showed me this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to take pictures, I wanted to document the world, I wanted to tell stories. I have to thank Ahlhauser and Counts for their help and advice in getting me started.

I was one of thousands of students he helped over the years.

You never felt he had favorites. It was a very democratic system.

Jay Hagenow, BA’90

John Ahlhauser was my instructor for photo editing. The first day of class, with no warning, we were given a test. A demanding test from a demanding man. There was a 100-word spelling test, a grammar test and a geography test that consisted of unlabeled maps of Central America and the Middle East for which we had to provide the name of each country.

With each groan elicited from the students, John’s face radiated glee. The test ended with the only photographs we saw that day, a slide show of world leaders that we had to identify AND spell correctly. Much to John’s delight , the class nearly became mutinous when we saw Muammar Gaddafi. The last photo was of John himself, reinforcing his own tricky surname. The kicker: our final exam for the course was the exact same test.

Jim Kelly, MA’88, PhD’90, associate professor of journalism at IU and director of undergraduate studies in The Media School

I was John’s student in the late 1980s and with him studied the effects of new communication technology on journalism. He was one of the foremost experts on the topic, having written his dissertation on the Electronic Newspaper in 1978 when the very idea of such a thing seemed space-age.

I was fortunate to have taken classes from him as a graduate student, to have assisted him in the classroom as an associate instructor and to have benefitted from his commentary as a member of my dissertation committee. Every time I misplace the keys to my Ernie Pyle Hall office, I think of John who would occasionally do the same thing. He was a great professor and I am lucky to share that little bit of absentmindedness with him, because on everything else, he was nearly without error.

Professor Steve Raymer

John was a prince of a guy who taught several generations of visual storytellers and all with such affability and kindness. As a summer intern at The Milwaukee Journal, I learned how to make better prints in the darkroom thanks to John. At Ernie Pyle Hall, I hope we have continued in some small way to move forward his legacy.

Wade Thrall, BA’84

John Ahlhauser was the main reason that I decided to come to IU in the fall of ’79. His easy-going demeanor made me feel welcome, and the program that he and Will Counts built was exactly what I wanted. My father and John both retired to Milwaukee in 1990, and we saw each other every few years right up to my father’s passing just last year. I was both amazed and alarmed at the electronic newspaper technology that John was showing his students. I expressed concern about how this might affect news photography in the future. He said that photojournalists will always be needed because they don’t just blindly point and shoot; they interpret what they see with the decisive moment, lighting and cropping. He assured me that I had the “eye” and not to worry about it. That was good enough for me! I made a living with my camera for the next 16 years, so he was right. He will be greatly missed.

Dave Weaver, Professor Emeritus of Journalism

John was a kind and caring person who helped so many along the way. In addition, he was a visionary when it came to predicting the electronic future of newspapers. My early research on videotex and teletext in Britain was inspired by John’s interest in electronic delivery of news. We were fortunate to have him on the journalism faculty.

Don Winslow, ’76

I would not have a journalism career were it not for John Ahlhauser. When I walked into Ernie Pyle Hall after stepping away from pre-med studies and an orderly’s job at the Bloomington Hospital (where, by the way, Lois Ahlhauser was an outstanding registered nurse), three people welcomed me with open arms: Indiana Daily Student photo editor Mary Jo Moss, professor Will Counts, and professor John Ahlhauser. I said that I’m not going to be a doctor and I think I want to be a photographer. Moss said, “Do you have a camera and what I are you doing this afternoon?” as she handed me my first assignment. I enrolled in classes taught by Counts and Ahlhauser. They were like brothers, in that they took us in and tucked us under their wings and shared everything – everything – with us, just as if we were their own kids.

Ahlhauser took pity on me, I think. I was nowhere near the talent of Rick Wood, Terry Diskey, Melissa Farlow, Terry John, Scott Goldsmith or any of the others. I was a piker by comparison. But John didn’t give up on me, he gave me just as much attention as the others. John’s sponsorship of the NPPA Student Chapter was critical in my career, as well as in the careers of all of the others. John said, “If you want to be a member of this profession, you need to join NPPA and that’s where you’re going to meet the people who will someday hire you, and the people you will be working with throughout your career.” I joined, so did everyone else. We did whatever John told us to do. He had our complete trust because he was so genuine, gentle, genteel, and caring.

I shot my way through the usual IDS rotations and editing slots and ended up in Wabash, IN, shooting for the Wabash Plain Dealer. After a few years I came back to IU and I was just days away from being unemployed and out of my rental house near campus when John called. He told me to get my portfolio together and drive 36 miles east to Columbus, IN, and to find the newspaper office of The Republic and ask for Stu Huffman, the editor. I didn’t think twice, I just did it. Huffman only pretended to look at my portfolio before he offered me the photographer’s job. He said, “Ahlhauser says I should hire you. When can you start?” I don’t know to this day if Huffman new I was hours away from being homeless, but I replied, “Next week?” He said, “Sure, and by the way, the features editor has a little apartment for rent about six blocks north of here. Go talk to her about it.” I drove back to Bloomington with a job and a place to live.

That, right there, was the magic of John Ahlhauser. People trusted him, his word was good as gold, and people did things like that not because they liked his students so much, but because they deeply admired and loved John.

So about one year went by when my phone rang in Columbus. It was John. He said he had a job for me to pursue, at The Milwaukee Journal Co., a picture editor’s slot at the morning paper, The Sentinel. I said, “John, really? I just got here. I haven’t finished unpacking. I like it here.” And this is where John could give you the bad news and make it sound good. He told me, “Well, Don, I don’t know if you’re ever going to be a great photographer, but I think you could be a really good picture editor.” What he was lovingly telling me was that I had a better shot at a newspaper career as an editor, not a shooter. I had been right all along: I wasn’t as good as those superstar students of his, but he cared just as much for me as for any of them.

“What do I do?” I asked. John said, “Call Truman Farris at The Sentinel, the managing editor. He just called me and he’s looking for a picture editor. I told him that he should talk to you.”

At this point I had no clue that John and Truman had worked together at The Journal for maybe 20 years and were best buddies in the way that only a reporter and photographer who had been in the deep weeds together many times before and survived it could be. I had no idea that it was already a done deal, that I would be moving to Milwaukee in a few weeks whether I thought it was a good idea or not. My fate was not my own; John Ahlhauser was moving me down a path that would guarantee me a great opportunity for success, maybe even despite myself.

When I called Mr. Farris he said, “Can you come up here and visit with us?” I said, “Of course, when?” He gave me a date and time, and I said “Okay, see you then,” and hung up. Little did I know that I’d passed the first Farris test. I later learned from Ahlhauser that if I had asked for his address, or how to get to the office, a few minutes would have gone by before a secretary would have called me and cancelled my interview. Farris was old school; he didn’t bother interviewing anyone who needed to be told how to get to the city’s daily newspaper’s office building on their own.

I was offered the job on the spot, of course, because as Mr. Farris said, “Ahlhauser said we should hire you.”

Two years later it happened again. J. Bruce Baumann, the assistant managing editor of The Pittsburgh Press, told me over a beer in the bathroom of a graphics conference’s hospitality suite that “John Ahlhauser said I should hire you.” And once again I said, “Sure, why not?”

Twice in the past year I’ve cried uncontrollably. The first was when Michel du Cille, one of John’s dearest students, friends, and biggest success stories, died in Liberia while covering the Ebola pandemic, and I had to call John and Lois and break the news to them before it hit the presses. It was like having to tell a father that his son was dead. And the second time was today. Yes, John was 92 and had a full and amazing life, and gave so deeply of himself and his gifts, and we should all be so lucky to have the family he’s had, both his own kids and those he adopted who sat gazing at him every day in class. But still, the world was a better place with John in it. It was a bit brighter yesterday, and a bit dimmer tonight.

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