Alum
Kevin Corcoran
Strategy director at Lumina Foundation and Arnolt Center board member
Kevin Corcoran, BAJ'88, has been working to support education and local journalism as part of the Lumina Foundation. He has been the program officer on more than $50 million worth of grants to news organizations over the past 18 years.
“I tell people I got my start in journalism carrying newspapers. I had three paper routes from over like six years from the late 70s until the early 80s when I graduated from high school. My first experience with journalism was getting up early in the morning and reading the paper while I was delivering it.
I was an IU basketball fan, and they won in ‘81 when I was in high school. Back then, people didn't apply to a bunch of colleges, so I looked at IU — it had a great journalism school — and I wrote to the dean while I was in high school, and I said, ‘hey, I'm thinking about majoring in journalism. What should I do?’
My first year, the History of Journalism class was a large lecture course that was actually taught by the dean. He took our pictures on the first day of class. There were over 100 people in the class, and he memorized who everyone was, and then he would call on us, and then you would stand up and respond. If you hadn't prepared, you could be standing for a while because he would just keep asking you questions. And basically, drilled into people like, okay, journalism is serious business, and you need to come prepared.
I got in there (Indiana Daily Student) sophomore year and started writing. Then over time, I had other roles. I ended up being the city editor, and we had a full city team. We used to beat the Herald-Times all the time on stories, which was fun.
One thing I remember was (IU) winning the national title in ‘87. We ended up going over to the (Indiana) Daily Student, and Kathy Flynn was working at the desk. She was doing the front page—if you've seen the cover, it was 'IU wins it all.’ The paper was printed in Columbus at the time, so we ended up driving out to Columbus to watch the paper roll off the press which was really cool.
When I first got interested in journalism, it was because I just liked the idea of being able to go out and find out why things were happening the way they were and being able to ask people questions that I probably wouldn't be able to ask otherwise. Journalism holds people accountable but also plays a role in informing people.
I mean, you can be a reasonably smart person and know what's going on nationally. But then if I say, ‘what's going on down the street,’ or 'why are they doing this project over here,’ you don't know because it's not getting covered. It's just an essential part of making people feel connected to their communities and like they can make a difference. Like they have the ability to influence things around them. And I think it's especially important right now because people feel like things are out of control, and they can't influence it, so it's hopeless. And I don't think that's true.”
Written By McKenna Cardona
Photos By Emma Ramirez