Bill Rose receives the 2015 Samuel S. Talbert Silver Em award from the Meek School of Journalism and New Media in the Overby Center, Wednesday, April 6.
(Photo by: Cady Herring)
“Do you have to be a journalism major to take the class?”
“Yes, we prefer it.”
“Well, I guess I’m a journalism major then.”
Bill Rose’s life was changed in an instant.
Rose’s snap decision to lie about his major paved the way for him to brush shoulders with some of the most influential people in the nation, travel the world and break news stories that would change the course of history. He just wanted an easy ‘A.’
Growing up in the Mississippi Delta, Rose had only known a simplistic life and he was okay with that.
“Think model town in America, the model town of small-town living, that’s what Shelby was,” Rose said.
Rose knew everyone in town and everyone knew him. Everywhere he went, his dog Sputnik was following right at his side except for when he was at school and during his shifts at his daddy’s corner drugstore.
The drugstore was filled with the townsfolk, soda fountain drinks and ice cream. After lots of practice, Rose had the perfect recipe for a cherry Coke mastered and could flip a scoop of ice cream in the air and catch it on the cone.
“I would try to do the second scoop on top of that but I lost several of them on the floor that way,” Rose laughed.
(Photo by: Logan Kirkland)
Professor Bill Rose sits on his desk holding his first depth-reporting magazine he made at Ole Miss.
Eventually, Rose put his small town in the rearview and headed to Ole Miss not knowing anything except that they had a dynamite football team and they were the best university in the state. Everything was unplanned but everything fell into place.
Flash forward about five decades later and Rose is receiving the 2015 Samuel S. Talbert Silver Em award from the Meek School of Journalism and New Media, where his life as a newspaperman began. The award is the University’s highest award for journalism and is named after Rose’s first journalism instructor.
Talbert, a William Faulkner look-alike and the chairman of the journalism department, was skeptical of Rose at first.
“He let me take the course against his best judgement,” Rose said. “The first story I turned in was the most godawful thing you’ve ever seen. It was just horrible. At the end I even wrote ‘the end.’”
With time, practice and guidance from Talbert, Rose bloomed into a great journalist. Journalism interwove itself into Rose’s life between his time with Pi Kappa Alpha and the golf team.
He served on the staff of the University newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, in many capacities including sports editor, managing editor and columnist.
“It was only natural that I worked at the newspaper,” Rose said.
Four years sped past and Rose was approaching a new deadline: graduation. At a loss for what to do and being scared to start a career, Rose decided to stay at his alma mater and venture into law school. That only lasted a week, though.
He received a phone call offering him $100 a week to work a newspaper job at the Bolivar Commercial in Cleveland, Mississippi. Once his foot was in the door, opportunity after opportunity followed until he settled in Florida for 34 years, working at the Miami Herald, The Tropic and The Palm Beach Post.
A small town boy transformed into a metro man.
“I covered the South for five years, just rolling all over the place,” Rose said. “I covered things like the funeral of Alabama coach Paul Bear Bryant, which I covered as a great Alabama cultural event. Hurricanes, race riots, school desegregation, politics but what I really enjoyed was covering the people of the South.”
His job that was based out of Atlanta expanded to cover more than those southern borders including Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Wyoming.
“It was great story after great story after great story,” Rose said. “It was a wonderful series of assignments. I got to meet presidents, too.”
Rose had barely been on the job at the Herald for half a year when the presidential campaign between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford swept through South Florida. Through a hometown connection, Rose was able to squeeze his way into Ford’s schedule while he was eating hotdogs with a local boy scout troop.
(Photo by: Logan Kirkland)
Bill Rose, Samuel S. Talbert Silver Em award recipient, smiles for a picture in his office Tuesday afternoon.
“Here I am, Bill Rose from Shelby, Mississippi sharing a hotdog with the president of the United States,” Rose said. “What other profession can you go into where you’re eating hotdogs with the president in the middle of the afternoon?”
Rose worked on many hard-hitting stories both as a reporter and editor. He exposed a garbage scandal which led the way to a grand jury investigation and other local corruption in government, racially-tense crime trials and presidential scandals.
“We really figured out all sort of corruption in Palm Beach government, changing the course of things there,” Rose said. “I think that’s the highest calling of a newspaperman. You shouldn’t be in this business if you don’t want to change the world in some way, it could just be a change in your town but to make things better.”
Around seven years ago, Rose and his wife Susan ventured back to where it all began but this time with the intention to retire.
Will Norton, dean of the journalism school, had a different plan for Rose.
“He took me for coffee and the next thing I knew, I was hired and teaching this course,” Rose said. He teaches an in-depth reporting course that has produced six magazines, multiple of which have won many awards for the students work.
It’s different for Rose to be on the other side of the classroom teaching but he’s energized by being around the youthful spark and creativity. He’s learning every day.
“Sometimes they can make you feel mighty old but sometimes they can make you feel mighty young,” Rose laughed. “I think that when we stop learning, we’re dead and I very much like being alive.”
Rose has wholly dedicated himself to his job at the Overby Center and his students since he arrived on campus. He’s won many awards throughout his journalism career but this one is unlike any other.
“Awards are always nice but an award and a couple of dollars won’t even get you a cup of coffee so I’ve always taken awards with a grain of salt,” Rose said. “It doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate them, especially from my alma mater. This one was special because it comes from Ole Miss and this is the place that got me started so it means something special to me to be honored by my old journalism school.”
