Scripps Legacy: D-Day Reporter John R. Wilhelm

About this series: The Scripps College of Communication is recognizing prominent Scripps College of Communication alumni. Look for a new entry each day, June 6-10.

Scripps College of Communication Legacy Week highlights legacies that show Scripps’ impact on history, culture and journalism. Our first example was alumna Jericka Duncan, a network news broadcaster who covered the 70th anniversary of D-Day and other big stories.

Our next legacy leader participated in D-Day on June 6, 1944 – young reporter John Wilhelm, who accompanied a landing party at Omaha Beach to cover the Allied invasion for Reuters news agency. Wilhelm joined the Ohio University faculty in 1968 as director of journalism and was founding dean of the College of Communication (now Scripps).

John Wilhelm personifies Scripps Legacy because he:

• Launched foreign-correspondence internships at Ohio University, sending hundreds of students overseas. Intern Paul Zach (BSJ’73) helped cover the Yom Kippur War for The Associated Press.
• Helped put Ohio University on the map. CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite, a fellow World War II correspondent, visited Ohio University at Wilhelm’s invitation in 1968 and signed a letter to support an Ohio University foreign-reporting scholarship in honor of World War II correspondent Bob Considine.
• Impacted students. At age 78, Wilhelm died on June 6, 1994, the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landing he had covered as a war correspondent. Eulogies at his Maryland retirement center, veering a bit into hyperbole, said Dean Wilhelm had plucked Midwestern kids from cornfields to put them in foreign news bureaus.

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Wilhelm's foreign internship program validates a journalism fundamental that at times is compromised or sold short: being there. Witnessing everyday life in Israel helped "destroy any one-dimensional view," said Gary Putka (BSJ’77), an Ohio University intern with The Associated Press in Tel Aviv. The internship helped launch an award-winning writing/editing career at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

The next Scripps Legacy, coming Wednesday, June 8, 2022, is TV producer Ken Erhlich, who graduated from Ohio University on June 7, 1964.