I gave the convocation speech earlier this month at the University of New Mexico for undergraduates, masters students and PhDs from the Communications and Journalism Department.
As you might imagine, 2025 is not the most propitious time for aspiring reporters and editors. The industry is in chaos and its practitioners are distrusted by a substantial portion of the American population.
I did not sugarcoat the situation. It is a terrifying time to be a journalist (mostly because of the financial instability of the industry and only a little because of a U.S. president who vilifies reporters, editors and media outlets that don’t kowtow to his administration). But it is an exhilarating time, too. Never has the country needed aspiring journalists who are armed with curiosity and permission to ask questions.
It might be worthwhile to sum up here for all of us living through these divisive and polarizing times, the theme of the speech I gave the graduates.
I started off by dating myself.
In a long-ago time called the 1980s I was seated where you were. It was an era when people marveled at fax machines and their ability to slowly, glacially push out sheets of paper with text you could read.
There was no social media. No Internet. No cellphones.
Some days, the world is unrecognizable to me because of all the technological innovation.
And yet, the world, to quote the Talking Heads, is still the same as it ever was nearly 40 years later.
We humans are not all that different from our long-ago ancestors, although our technology is.
People will try to make you think otherwise. But we are still bungling about trying to figure out how best to live with one another in community and trying to answer the same questions that sages, philosophers, poets, artists, and prophets have been asking forever.
Not only the question of how do we live together in community, but how should we treat one another everyday.
These questions matter a great deal today.
Change is everywhere. Which means fear, pain, loss and anger are everywhere.
And into this confusing, scary world you walk.
However, you do not enter this world unarmed. You possess a truly powerful weapon. Not the Internet. Or artificial intelligence. Or a smartphone. It is your brain. That miracle of miracles that makes you stop and think to yourself, “That doesn’t sound right, or I never thought of that or I thought I knew all about this person because of the way they voted or where they live or the job they do or how they speak … but they are one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met.”
What?!
More than ever, the world needs gifted journalists and communicators who say … “what?!”
To illustrate my point, I called attention to a wonderful scene near the end of the first season of the TV show, “Ted Lasso.” For those who have not watched the series, Ted Lasso is a football coach who, to everyone’s amazement, takes a job coaching a British soccer team. And everyone makes fun of him as he learns the game.
In the scene Ted is playing a high-stakes game of darts in a pub with a man who does not think to ask if Ted has ever shot darts. Turns out, Ted has played a lot of darts. Every Sunday afternoon with his father from age 10 to 16 until his father passed away.
Of course Ted wins in dramatic fashion, but not before quoting the great American poet, Walt Whitman.
“Be curious. Not judgmental.”
Of course, this is easier said than done.
After nearly 40 years as a journalist, I find it easy to be judgmental.
I’ve reported on so many terrible stories the goodness of humanity is regularly in question for me. A governor who went to federal prison for corruption. Politicians stealing money. The 9/11 terror attacks. A person poisoning other people with anthrax. One person shooting, stabbing, or beating another person to death. All the people who think they know everything they need to know about another person because of … what they believe politically or the religion they belong to or their lack of religion or the language they speak or how they speak or where they were born or the color of their skin.
It is a daily struggle for me to not give in to being judgmental.
And then comes along some TikTok or YouTube video, or a news story, that usually involves a person sacrificing something — their time, their money, even their lives — to help another person.
And suddenly I remember all of the people who have surprised me over the years.
With their compassion. Their empathy. Their curiosity.
Let me be clear. Being curious does not mean that you are a pushover. Or that you must give up your values. Nor does it relieve you of the responsibility to call out wrongdoing when you see it.
All it means is that your fellow human beings are more complicated, and surprising,and interesting, than their political ideologies, or partisan affiliations, or religions, or their lack of religion, or where they are from or how they speak.
Everyone among us has experienced dashed dreams and loss. In this age of easy stereotypes and a dismissiveness of people and views we don’t agree with, we must remember this truth about each other.
Our democracy may very well rely on it.
Trip Jennings started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle, before working at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican. He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth.