Web Site of Dr. Fred Endres

Professor

School of
Journalism & Mass Communication

Kent State University
'There is no democracy
in a newsroom!'
'Forget grades. Grades don't count. Learning counts!
What did you learn?'
'The only thing news media have to sell is their credibility!'


Fred Endres has been at Kent State since Tarzan was a small boy.

Eschewing the lucrative world of Washington, D.C. journalism, Endres left the magazine editing and reporting field for the bucolic environs of Kent, taking a hit in the wallet, but embarking on a career he has regretted only on occasion.


For 30 years, Endres has stalked the corridors and classrooms of Taylor Hall, teaching thousands of students the nitty-gritty of newswriting, reporting, history, editorial writing, ethics, and, more recently, computer assisted journalism, information gathering, and online journalism.

Endres earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bowling Green on the installment plan. He dropped out after two years of studying newspapering because “I had learned all I needed to know.”

 

After working for a year for a string of suburban Cleveland weeklies and suffering the brickbats of a tyrannical editor, he returned to BG, humbled. He resumed his journalism studies, but also wrote sports for the local daily paper, The Sentinel, on the weekends. Soon he was hired full time to report cop and court news and to write features.

 

 

Eventually, he was promoted to County Editor, where he learned that farmers are some of the greatest people in the world and that you have to be careful where you step when you interview them.

 

Along the way, he took a leave from the Sentinel, and began to work again on the college paper, The BG News. He was selected editor and oversaw the transition to a daily publication cycle and a switch from blanket to tabloid size.

 

For his troubles, he was named Outstanding Senior in Journalism and Outstanding Senior in the University. That summer, he interned at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and was offered a full time job, but he liked BG so much that he returned to the Sentinel and went to work earning a master’s degree in American Studies.

 

 

 

 

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While a graduate student, Endres was permitted to teach a class one day by a foolish journalism professor. Endres enjoyed it so much, he decided to try it for real. That led to a year of teaching journalism and freshman English at one of the true hell holes of middle America, Western Illinois University (which was actually pretty nice) in Macomb, IL (which wasn’t).

A year later, he moved to the University of Toledo to teach journalism, and he thoroughly enjoyed his classes and students. Liked one of them so much, in fact, that he married her.

When the school year ended, they headed to D.C. where they both worked and attended the University of Maryland at night. After five years, they came back to Ohio, he with a Ph.D., she with a master’s in journalism (she later earned her Ph.D. in history from Kent State).

Today, they have two great kids: a daughter who works with the homeless in Canton, Ohio, and an 18-year-old son who wants to be ... well, he's not really sure.

 

They’ve restored a 100-year-old green-gabled farm house in the country, sold it, and built an arts-and-crafts style bungalow in the Tree City.

 

At KSU, Endres has published articles in the appropriate academic and professional journals but had the most fun researching and writing a history of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a history of the venerable Daily Kent Stater.

Neither was nominated for a Pulitzer, but two alums at Ray’s did say it was the best stuff Endres had written in years.

Now a revered "full bull," Endres continues to preach the gospels of accuracy, objectivity and clarity to students who, on occasion, listen.

In his spare time, he sells antiques and collectibles on eBay. He's never met an auction, flea market or estate sale he didn't like.




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