Portage native Len Clark was always thinking of tomorrow. As an instructor at Notre Dame University on the cutting edge of digital journalism, Clark looks back fondly at his humble beginnings, coming from a region that built his love for radio and journalism.
"I went to Portage High School and graduated in 1982. If we're going to go back to where my interest in radio came from, we have to go back to the pre-digital days, back when everything was analog," says Clark. "At the time, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Fortunately, we live in the Chicagoland area and therefore have been exposed to greatest radio possible. I felt handicapped because Portage didn't have a local radio station. I was kind of envious of towns around Indiana where individuals grew up with a local station. I wanted to do something in radio."
It was the desire to jump into the radio business that would land him his first job, even if his approach was a bit unorthodox at the time.
"One day I just walked into a radio station and said that I would like a job," says Clark. "While they were skeptical at first, they eventually hired me to run the board on a Friday night. It's how I cut my teeth on doing radio work. Growing up in a blue-collar area, I got to watch people go to work where they did the same thing every day. I know they loved it but I had some different tastes and wanted to do more than that. Being in journalism means that every day is a different day, you make your own day."
Clark continued working for a couple of years to save up enough money to further his education as a university student. It was here where he began to develop another passion, the joy of journalism and education.
"I eventually fell in love with the education aspect of journalism," says Clark. "For many years, I taught at the University of Evansville where I also got to run their TV station and got to experiment with new technology at the time. It was a very exciting thing to see how new technology and journalism were coming together."
Clark's fascination with technology and the art of storytelling has been a daily part of his life. With new technology and new ways to tell stories across a digital medium, Clark is always interested in learning about and experiencing the next big thing.
"My motivation is to stay a step ahead of students," says Clark. "It's being afraid of technology passing me by. The football player Gale Sayers once said that 'I run scared because someone is going to catch me.' This applies to my thoughts as well. I have to stay ahead. I have to keep learning and not settle."
This attitude of running scared has allowed Clark to become a catalyst for pushing innovation and using the latest technology to change how stories and messages are delivered.
"The first web page I can remember seeing back then was Stanford University's radio station web page. I was blown away and saw a massive amount of potential for communicating over the web. This is when I wrote my first grant to enable Evansville's radio station to stream audio over the internet.
Clark then worked with Ameritech proposing a grant to build a news room in England at a school owned by Evansville. For Clark, the massive door that the internet opened with the ability to communicate anyone across the world presented new possibilities for how journalism would change the way they told stories forever.
"We were seeing at the time that the internet was not the only way to communicate locally but with alumni all over the world," says Clark. "This distribution vehicle did fascinating things for how we use journalism, including sports journalism."
This eventually lead Clark to the smartphone revolution, the handheld communication device that presented the next big leap forward in terms of communication.
"I was experimenting with the iPhone and communicating with individuals doing non-traditional things in journalism utilizing this device," says Clark. "This eventually allowed me to communicate with small communities in England and Ireland, where we would communicate and share ideas. I began utilizing this emerging media to cover Notre Dame athletics."
His work with Notre Dame did not go unnoticed. Impressed with his work and use of tech, Notre Dame approached him to teach at their university. It was after establishing himself there that he emerged as Indiana's first mobile journalist.
"Being a mobile journalist has allowed me to make I love into a living," says Clark. "Everyday I get to work with emerging tech and interact with like-minded people."
As the number of like-minded people steadily began to grow all over the world, Clark continued to stay in the company of these innovators. His most recent trip to Dublin brought him face to face with hundreds of other mobile journalists at Mojocon, a mobile journalism conference.
"I went to Dublin and got to meet 600 individuals who are doing fantastic things in their communities using smart phones, smart glass, and drone technology," says Clark. "We had journalists, technologists, and media organizations all coming together to look at what is the next step in terms of tech, storytelling and what we do to stay ahead of the curve."
For Clark, being able to spend his days and nights working in a world that is constantly pushing innovation and has been a dream come true for this Portage native. Being able to recognize what we have and how to use it to move journalism forward is a daily adventure.
"We live in a 'twitterized' universe and it's changed the way individuals write. Attention spans change every three seconds unless we capture their attention," says Clark. We now know that different forms of a story appeal to an individual in different ways. This can be through articles, highlights, short 30-second photo slides or video. We have different methods to deliver the same story in different ways, satisfying everyone's needs. Digital tools help you become a better storyteller. I'm an individual who doesn't want to recreate the wheel, I want to put new treads on it."
For Clark's students, this means not just teaching them one path of journalism, but multiple ones.
"When I teach students, I'm preparing them to go into an industry where you can't say that you're just a print, radio or TV journalist. You have to say you are a multimedia content producer," says Clark. "I'm a real fan of tapping into the community. I'm teaching them to be entrepreneurial journalists. Right now, I want to train someone who can tell a story with 15 different tools so they can position themselves for a true multimedia industry."
You could say that Clark, much like the famous Bear Gale Sayers is still 'running scared'. While fear of falling behind the curve is always on Clark's mind, the excitement of what is next and how it can be used is a constant form of motivation and excitement, for the next big thing is always just around the corner.
"Every morning, I can't wait to get up to see what all my friends across the pond have been up to for the last six to seven hours while I slept," says Clark. "I get to see what they have done and what is the new paradigm for teaching journalism in this world. It's all so exciting, and it's something I get to do every day."