Scott Schurz ‘57 has spent a career in newspapers. Now he works to make sure journalists around the world get that same chance.
Newspapers have been Schurz’s life: He has been pouring over them daily since age six.
At age 6, Scott Schurz would devour a newspaper like a businessman on the morning commute. He read coverage of his hometown Notre Dame football team. He scanned the radio schedules to find out when The Lone Ranger aired. And he checked the movie listings for the local theatre (admission: 25 cents). “I was reading newspapers before I was reading school books,” he says. Today, after four decades in the newspaper business, Schurz’s passion is preserving press freedom. In the past 25 years, he has worn out seven passports, visiting more than 80 countries, most of which are not on the typical itinerary of a retiree. Representing various industry associations, he travels to places like Chili, Guatemala and Mexico, where publishing a newspaper can be as dangerous as patrolling Fallujah. The Web site for the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) tracks the number of newspaper employees assassinated or otherwise killed so far in 2009. At press time, the number was 15; in 2008, 70 journalists were killed.
It’s the assassinations that get most of Schurz’s attention. He meets with government officials around the world trying to bring justice to those who kill members of the media, while sending the message to others that they can’t carry out these crimes with impunity. Alberto Ibargüen, who accompanied Schurz on missions for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), a nonprofit committed to defending freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the Americas, says they asked officials to view these murders as more than mere homicides. “They were a way of silencing the voice of democracy and freedom,” says Ibargüen, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and former publisher of The Miami Herald. Schurz’s staunch belief in a free press–and his willingness to bravely support it wherever it is challenged–makes him a “magnificent ambassador,” Ibargüen says.
About ten years ago, Schurz traveled to Brazil with Ibargüen and other members of the IAPA to protest the murders of several journalists, including one who was shot in broad daylight after publishing accounts of corruption in his town. “We were at a quandary as to why the police couldn’t find witnesses,” Schurz recalls. Along with a newspaper association from Brazil, the team met with Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, pressing for action and making it clear that they would continue to publicize the case. Their efforts helped bring about a prosecution.
It’s frustrating and often mundane work, but Schurz has heard plenty of stories that serve as inspiration. A television station in Venezuela that’s critical of the government frequently loses its power thirty minutes before the nightly news, only to mysteriously reappear the following morning. A journalist in Nicaragua was jailed for writing articles critical of the government, then subjected to a sadistic warden who would allegedly pick a prisoner at random to stand in front of a firing squad. An editor in Uganda was forced to print his neighboring Botswana after five bombs blew the newsroom right off of its foundation. After being followed twice by a man who claimed to be sent by the minister of information to assassinate him, the editor quit his job. “Because you live in the U.S., you start to assume the rest of the world is like we are–it couldn’t be further from the truth,” Schurz says. “The fact is, less than 30 percent of the world has what we would refer to as a free press.”
Schurz, 73, inherited his love of newspapers from his father, Franklin D. Schurz, who ascended the ranks of the family business. But Schurz’s father never pressured his son to follow him professionally. After Schurz received his B.A. degree from Denison in 1957, he worked in teaching jobs for several years before joining Schurz Communications, Inc., a nationwide firm in South Bend, Ind., comprised of newspapers, television, radio, and cable operations.
Scott Schurz travels all over the world to speak with government officials about the importance of a free press. Here he talks with Leonel Fernández Reyna, president of the Dominican Republic, at a conference in Santa Domingo.
“I was the last of the four children to decide to go into the business,” he says. “I wanted to do it because of free will. Not because it was expected.” Throughout his career, he was the publisher and editor-in-chief of several Indiana newspapers, including The Herald-Times, The Times-Mail, The Reporter-Times, The Mooresville-Decatur Times, and The Southside Times. Today he’s semiretired (he holds the position of vice chairman at Schurz Communications), but he hasn’t stopped giving back to the industry that shaped his life.
That means ensuring that future generations develop their own appreciation for newspapers. Since 2000 he has served the World Association of Newspapers as chairman of the WAN Young Readers/Newspapers in Education Committee, which helps teachers use the newspaper as a classroom tool. It’s a cause Schurz has long embraced; years ago he led a program through one of the family papers that helped local teachers incorporate the newspaper into their curriculum. After teachers reported that a group of teenage boys who had been struggling in the classroom immediately turned to the classified section to read about cars, Schurz suggested that the students write their own car ads. “All of a sudden they liked writing,” he recalls. His peers worldwide have recognized his efforts with several distinctions. IAPA named him honorary president for life of the organization. And in 006, the Newspaper Association of America appointed him U.S. epresentative to WAN, making him one of the vice presidents of WAN, which represents 18,000 newspapers worldwide.
Despite the vote of confidence, he’s uncomfortable with the notion of ink devoted to his own story. “Don’t make it a big deal on me,” he says. His father taught him to give back to the industry. The fact that he does so by traveling millions of miles to unsafe places is easily explained: “It beats anything else I could think of doing,” he says. “I guess I could sit in a rocking chair and spend my time in a retirement home, but that’s not my bag.” So tomorrow Schurz will open the newspaper, check the score of the football game–and the weather in Paraguay.