Date of publication in the Champaign, Ill., News-Gazette: Nov. 17, 1998



News-Gazette photo by Robin Scholz

Steve Helle, journalism professor at the University of Illinois, talks to his 'Communications and the Law' class earlier this month. Helle recently was named one of three Teachers of the Year by The Freedom Forum, a national foundation dedicated to First Amendment freedoms.


A real class act
UI prof is anything but boring in teaching journalism

By JULIE WURTH
©1998 The News-Gazette
   You never know what you might hear in Steve Helle's class.
   George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" monologue. Tabloid headlines from the National Enquirer.
   A boring law lecture this is not. Helle, a University of Illinois journalism professor, pours every ounce of his passion for the First Amendment into his "Communications and the Law" class.
   "It's a great course – who can not like law?" Helle said.
   Well, lots of people, actually, but they've probably never taken his course.
   After winning just about every campus teaching accolade since his UI career began in 1979, Helle recently was named one of three Teachers of the Year by The Freedom Forum, a national foundation dedicated to First Amendment freedoms.
   The award carries a $10,000 prize, which Helle plans to sink into college for his two daughters, 11-year-old Samantha and 8-year-old Stephanie.
   Helle's nomination from college Dean Kim Rotzoll was supported by letters from a dozen faculty and former students, many of whom said his course was the best and the most difficult they had taken at the UI. Nearly all paid tribute to Helle's energy, humor and dedication to students.
   "His was the only class I remember that students loved even though it was extremely demanding, the only class that people consistently showed up for at 9 a.m. on Monday morning, the only one that people chose to take knowing at best only two or three out of 40 students might get A's," wrote Laurie Goering, now South America correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.
   One recent class illustrated why. After a short review of a midterm exam, Helle dove into his latest subject – New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case that established the ground rules for libel cases involving public figures. The subject is one of Helle's favorites.
   "Oh, we're going to have some fun today," he said.
   With his almost Thespian-style delivery, Helle rattled off several tabloid headlines, provoking laughter from the class: "Linda Smoked Pot at the End," "Goldie Walks Out," "Queen Orders Charles: Dump Camilla."
   "How can they get away with that?" he asked, and the discussion was off and running.
   "If the teacher doesn't have enthusiasm for the subject, how can you expect the students to?" Helle said. "That's always been my first priority – just to project that what we're doing is a lot of fun, that there are real applications in life for this."
   The class had its share of sleepy-eyed students. But all knew, by the anxiety in the pit of their stomachs, they could be called on at any moment.
   Helle uses the Socratic teaching method, constantly questioning students to apply the lessons of an assigned case to other situations, rather than feeding them answers. Only by asking questions can a teacher stimulate students to "think, think, think," he said. He also grades on class participation, which tends to keep attendance up.
   Students accustomed to listening passively to lectures are flabbergasted for the first few classes, and they don't know how to read and analyze legal cases, Helle said.
   "Three weeks or so into the semester, they start picking that up, and we start having more intelligent discussions."
   He plays devil's advocate, arguing the opposite of whatever position the students take so they can appreciate that there often are no clear answers.
   The give-and-take is not mean-spirited but encouraging. He moves on if it's clear a student is stumped. His philosophy: Don't embarrass students, make sure they understand the question, rephrase it if necessary or tell a story to give them a moment to regroup before moving on to someone else.
   Helle has inspired numerous journalism students to take up law school, an achievement not all department faculty appreciate.
   But beyond the legal knowledge they gained, many students said Helle taught them how to think for themselves. Tim Healey, who took the course in 1980, remembers thinking in the middle of one lively class discussion, "This is what college is supposed to be."
   Helle is a tough grader, giving out more C's than any other grade – a rarity at the college level. Rotzoll said Helle flunks more students than fail in all other 200-level communications courses combined.
   Yet his course has constant waiting lists. Students enroll from all over campus, even though it's required only for journalism majors.
   And they give him rave reviews. He's been named to the campuswide list of excellent teachers every semester he's taught since fall 1980 – an unprecedented 33 in a row, including the 16 he served as journalism department head. He twice received the coveted Undergraduate Distinguished Teaching Award, in 1982 and 1996.
   Whether they're journalists or not, students tend to come away from his class with an appreciation for the First Amendment, even if they don't start out that way. That's his goal.
   He wants them not just to memorize media law, but to understand the history and philosophy of the First Amendment, so they will "think like enlightened citizens in a representative democracy and not simply like lawyers," Rotzoll said.
   It's a tall order.
   "They don't know anything about freedom of speech and press coming in," Helle said. "The whole concept that you protect speech that's offensive is so foreign to them. I try to explain that the First Amendment is unnecessary in cases of popular speech.
   "First Amendment freedom is not something that comes naturally. You have to educate people in it," he said. "If this democracy has a chance to survive, more people have to learn what the nature of freedom really is."
   Helle's reputation extends beyond the UI. He's frequently asked to give talks at press workshops and conferences on teaching media law.
   He served on numerous campus committees dedicated to improving undergraduate education, writing the draft of a key provision that now gives teaching equal prominence with research in tenure decisions.
   He is, said former UI Provost Larry Faulkner, "a teacher's teacher. There are too few like him."
   Helle never considered practicing law. His love was media law, and only about five lawyers in the country are able to practice it full time, he said.
   He grew up in Cedar Rapids and later moved to Manchester, Iowa, where he was editor of his high school paper. He majored in journalism as an undergraduate at the University of Iowa, then decided to go to law school after covering trials for the Cedar Rapids Gazette.
   He received his law degree in 1979 and began working for the UI immediately.
   "I took the bar in Iowa on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, got the results on Friday and was teaching here on Monday," he said.
   The previous media law instructor had left the UI on short notice to become counsel for the Los Angeles Times, and the department needed a quick replacement.
   Helle had called the department a month earlier at the suggestion of James Carey, an Iowa professor who had taught at the UI and would later become dean of the UI College of Communications.
   "My life at that moment was charmed," Helle said. "To start off in a Big Ten university, teaching the subject that you love most of anything, was incredible. That just doesn't happen, except in fairy tales."



©1998 The News-Gazette