A Tribute to Deb Lev

It is just so satisfying to see the long-overdue return of a student newspaper to Centenary University. This is partly because of my strong feelings about media literacy in general (calling media literacy “important” is like calling oxygen “useful”) and the state of American journalism in particular (it’s broken and needs to be fixed), but mostly because I know how much it would please my friend, colleague and mentor, Professor Deb Lev, who passed away in February, 2020.

Deb retired from Centenary in 2018 after 28 years at the university, long enough to have been a member of what was once called the Department of English and Communication, of which she spent time as Chair. She and the Communication program would later join with Fine Arts to form the Department of Communication and Fine Arts. Professor Lev was for many years the primary instructor of courses for the Journalism concentration, but her greatest joy as a teacher was as the devoted faculty adviser for the campus newspaper, The Quill.

Deb had the increasingly challenging task of instructing students in the craft of ethical and responsible news gathering and reporting. This, in an age where many news sources have shifted the emphasis from presenting information that is actually in the public’s interest to presenting information the public is merely interested in. In the process, she showed her students not only how to be professional journalists, but how to be active consumers of the news, who understood the standards to which we are supposed to be holding news organizations. And her students loved her for it.

Deb—who remained active as a professional journalist over the years, contributing opinion pieces and stories to numerous print and online news outlets—would be thrilled and proud to know that there will once again be students chronicling all things Centenary. She loved a particular quote from 60 Minutes creator and producer Don Hewitt, and I can hear her saying it now: “Tell me a story!”