Patrick Houston ‘75: Finding His Noble Calling at Allegheny

The 1970s marked the end of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, disco and bell bottom jeans. It also marked Patrick Houston's years at Allegheny College.

"I went to Allegheny as a pre-med major, which was totally delusional on my part," laughed Patrick. "I was always good at language, but not good at math and science. So being an idealistic person in the early '70s, I decided to pursue an interdisciplinary studies major, combining courses from political science, American literature and American history."

Patrick joined The Campus as a sportswriter and was appointed editor-in-chief during his sophomore year. "It was a really daunting job," he recalled. "We published twice a week. Two times a week I was pulling all-nighters to put the paper out. It nearly killed me!"

Patrick's most vivid memory as editor was reporting on an altercation between two white fraternity brothers and Black students who were members of the Association of Black Collegians (ABC).

"It happened at the first dance sponsored by the ABC at the student center, and it was a big deal," Patrick said. "I don't remember what caused the fight, but I wrote a story for The Campus. People on all sides were pretty angry with the story," he said.

"The president at the time, Lawrence Pelletier, called me to his office and said, 'I don't know that I would have handled it exactly the way you did, but you need to know that right now the campus is a tinderbox.' I'll never forget that word: tinderbox," Patrick said. "And then I went back to the newsroom and wrote a story about that." Patrick noted that President Pelletier did not censor him, rather cautioned him to be sensitive with how he reported a sensitive issue.

"I think I decided early on to become a journalist," Patrick recalled. "This was the time of Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein, and Walter Cronkite. Journalism became a noble calling." Further fueling his journalist ambitions, Patrick said with a smile, was his "uncanny resemblance" to Robert Redford who portrayed Bob Woodward in "All the President's Men."

His senior year internship at a small Pennsylvania newspaper led to reporting and editing positions at bigger newspapers in West Virginia, then as a correspondent for Business Week magazine. He transitioned to digital journalism, becoming a pioneer in the field as editor-in-chief of CNET.com, then as a vice president at Yahoo Tech.

"The calling in journalism today is for people with intellectual honesty. Journalists who are fair, reasoned, civil, and know how to interact with people," Patrick said. "Intellectual honesty was a bottom-line value when I was at Allegheny, and I hope The Campus continues to instill that to this day. Only now in retrospect, have I come to fully relish my Allegheny experience and all the values it instilled in me."