Lydia Hansen

Front desk worker at the Student Administrative Services office.

I was part of a panel of local professional journalists and student journalists discussing changes in journalism and news consumption in the past 50 years. The conference was focused on looking at the impact of events in the political and social movements of 1968 and discussing what has changed or been learned since that time. Jim Schiebel (HSB professor, former St. Paul mayor) invited me to join the team of panelists, along with Andy Stec (Hamline senior). We collaborated with Bill Salisbury (political/gov't reporter for the Pioneer Press) to interview David Lebedoff and Vance Opperman. Both are Minneapolis attorneys and both were involved in 1968 - Lebedoff in support of Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Opperman backing anti-war Gene McCarthy. Andy and I got to meet with both of them and ask them some questions about the events of 1968, their perspective on the media, and what has changed in the time since then. I then used those interviews as talking points and reference material for the discussion panel at the conference. Later, Andy and I collaborated on interviews with Hamline faculty to write a story about Hamline's perspective on the changes since 1968.