Richard Aregood on Rutgers-Camden

The Camden campus was far from the little jewel it is today, although it had its considerable charms. I actually liked what passed for a student union in the basement of an abandoned church, hard by the Steelman Business School and the bridge. The city library a few blocks west was a handy place to work and study and a beautiful tiny Victorian building. It was also very quiet, since few people tended to venture that far off campus. Otherwise, what we had was essentially a row house neighborhood with a college crammed into it. I remember one class that one entered and exited via fire escape. I suspect a lot of us pledged fraternities and the one sorority so we'd have a place to hang out. For the most part, we were commuters, so campus life was hardly a smorgasbord of thrills and excitement. What it was (and I was only dimly aware at the time) was an opportunity for us working class heroes to learn skills and discipline and gather the knowledge that would change our lives.

For me, a career as a writer started to be shaped in my freshman English composition class. It was taught by John C. Ferner, a veteran high school teacher with an abiding love for early 20th century journalistic essayists. He had us writing continuously and provided us with direct and personal editing. I have patterned my own media writing classes after that long-ago comp class. It probably was then that I realized that I was pretty good at this and enjoyed every part of it, even the deadline writing. I never was able to take another course with him, but still think of him and what his class meant to a bewildered 16-year-old.

It wasn't just the writing, though. Nobody can be a good writer without reading and Rutgers allowed me to spend entire years reading Chaucer and Shakespeare. I don't know exactly how it worked, but Walter Gordon's full-year romantic poetry class still resonates with me as a person and as a writer.

But I think the most direct preparation for my career came at the Gleaner. At that time, the paper was edited by a friend who was a dedicated political science scholar. If the word had been invented then, I would have described him as an incipient neoconservative. He filled the paper with thoughtful stuff about subjects like the Yalta Conference of 1945, much of it a challenge to read. I, being far more simple-minded and audience-driven, even then took a tabloid approach to my Gleaner column, covering such heavy subjects as how deafening the music was in the snack bar. It was then that I discovered the joy of writing something that people actually read. I never looked back.

Richard Aregood received the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1985. He is also a three-time winner of the distinguished writing award of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the 1994 recipient of the Scripps-Howard Foundation’s Walker Stone Award for Editorial Writing.

Aregood began his career as editor, reporter, and photographer for the Dix-McGuire Mirror, a now-defunct weekly that served military bases in southern New Jersey. He went on to become a reporter and night city editor at the Burlington County Times and a stringer for United Press International, the New York World-Telegram, and others. He was also a police reporter at the Philadelphia Daily News during Mayor Frank Rizzo’s tenure. In 1975, Aregood became chief editorial writer of the Daily News and then editorial page editor in 1978. He left Philadelphia in 1995 to become editorial page editor of the Star Ledger in Newark, New Jersey.

Aregood was inducted into the Rutgers University Hall of Distinguished Alumni in 1993. He is also a member of the Dean’s Council for the Rutgers-Camden College of Arts and Sciences.

Media Contact: Cathy K. Donovan
(856) 225-6627
E-mail: catkarm@camden.rutgers.edu