Scratching an Itch: Why I Left PR for IT
By John Fritz

On my last day as UMBC’s news director in 1999, National Public Radio ran a nine-minute segment on President Freeman Hrabowski and our nationally recognized Meyerhoff Scholars Program that supports minority science education. A few colleagues at other schools graciously called to congratulate us, but when I told them where I was going, I could tell they were dumbfounded. Basking in the glow of a hard-earned, major national media placement, I had my doubts, too. But looking back on how technology has influenced the PR field, the move seemed natural to me. Now, in my role supporting faculty who want to use technology in their teaching, I'm using my PR skills to promote what's possible and their colleagues who are doing it. What’s old is new again.

My interest in technology grew from a practical need in college. During my senior year as an English and religion major, my parents moved about an hour away, which put my mother—and typist—out of driving range for my numerous papers. I took typing in 9th grade, but rarely used it. So, following the lead of a favorite professor, I bought a Kaypro II personal computer in 1984 for $1,850. Ouch! It was a "portable" 26-pound rectangular brushed aluminum cube, with a 9" green phosphor monitor, detachable keyboard, and two 5 1/4" floppy drives, one for the CP/M (pre-MS/DOS) operating system and another to write up to 180k worth of files—not much larger than a spam email attachment today.  Armed with an ear shattering dot-matrix printer and WordStar, I made it through my senior year and haven't been without a computer since.

When I went to grad school at the University of Maryland, I managed to get an assistantship in the development office, drafting thank you letters to donors for then Chancellor John Slaughter. It was mind-numbingly boring, but countless mail merges made me a WordPerfect whiz in high demand with the secretaries lost in Reveal Codes hell. Later, when the public information office needed a calendar editor, I took the job because I could occasionally write for the faculty/staff newspaper and loved the clarity of journalism compared to the abstract critiques I was writing on T.S. Eliot.

To this day, I attribute any technology ability I have to WordPerfect's F9 or "Help" key because it taught me how to help myself, a transferable skill facilitated by most good software. If there isn't good online help, I'm suspicious of the programmers because they probably don't care about real users, if they've even met one.

While I wanted to be a college professor, I was newly married and burned out on Derrida, Foucault and the critical theory du jour captivating most English departments. I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm or money for a Ph.D, so after getting my master's and teaching at a small American school just south of London for a year, I returned to College Park's news office in 1992 and began my PR apprenticeship under Roland King. In addition to pushing me on my writing and media skills, Roland taught me how to use a nifty little database called Q&A by Symantec, which he used to keep all of his media contacts (Symantec later replaced it with ACT). I began to help him maintain the database and develop it further with queries & reports.

At the same time, another College Park colleague, designer Linda Martin, had been showing me the wonders of email, which, amazingly, almost all UM profs seemed to be using. Instead of schlepping across the vast College Park campus, I could write them follow up notes from interviews, send them draft stories to review, and they would respond almost instantly. Hanging around fellow staffers (and former journalists) Tom Otwell, Fariss Samarai and Lisa Gregory also helped develop my news nose.

Before leaving College Park to become public affairs officer for the UM Schools of Law and Social Work in Baltimore, I was an early adopter of ProfNet, which Dan Forbush started in 1992. My new boss, John Hachtel, became intrigued, especially when I added a contact management log to a pirated version of Roland's database so we could track all contacts, including ProfNet responses, any of the media staff had with a reporter.

I must admit, I was a whiz with Q&A and (dare I say) began to intuit the logic behind it. As long as I followed the directions in the manual, I could make it repeat pre-defined searches and behave the way I wanted it to. I detested the new Windows version because using a mouse rendered my encyclopedic recall of Q&A and WordPerfect keyboard commands useless. But I adapted, started using Word like everyone else, and also began to tinker with programming outside of work.

I built a membership database for the education association my wife worked for and, of all things, a recipe database for my mother and a work colleague, both of whom complained about their culinary chaos. I enjoyed interviewing them for their requirements, testing prototypes and building something others found useful. I spent many late nights and weekends tinkering away, totally oblivious to the time, which is when you know you’re a geek.

When I got the director of media relations job at UMBC in 1995, I was determined to make use of technology. So one of the first things I did was email Jack Suess, then assistant director of University Computing Services (UCS) and now UMBC's Chief Information Officer, to find out more about UMBC's technical setup like email, web and database development. While UCS didn't support the Q&A database I loved or Pegasus email, which I used at UMAB, Jack went out of his way to provide network space for my own version of Q&A, even though it took some of his staff's time to troubleshoot. Hmm? A technical person willing to help? I remember thinking that was unusual.

During this time my media relations skills started catching up with my technical skills, and we started landing major placements, some with the help of ProfNet or email relationships I built through follow ups. I even placed Jack in a Washington Post story about Webmasters. But we were short-staffed and I had to devote more time to UMBC's dynamic and media savvy president, Freeman Hrabowski, as well as our national champion chess team and a few other brags. Looking back on it now, managing a young school's growing media presence while developing its virtual one was draining. I would lament all the problems on our Website, but the fact was I worked for the advancement office and the external focus of media relations understandably had to be first.

Fortunately for me (and I think UMBC), Jack made a home for me in the
Office of Information Technology as "Coordinator of Web Development." Basically, this meant I was the one you started with if you had a problem or request about UMBC's site. Nothing new about that. But now I was fielding calls about a drop/add deadline announcement to students in our portal, a jobs database on our HR site, and a new schedule of classes link. Not your usual advancement fare.

As our site has grown, I pretty much know where everything goes—or should. I also know the various groups that make up the "village" of editors, designers, programmers, faculty, staff and students that maintains our site. This helped when (like many other schools), we hop-scotched from one student programmer to another. In fact, you could say I’m the village griot who keeps the oral tradition alive. Don’t ask me to write down who does what on our site, because it changes often and depends on what you want to have done.

Beyond UMBC's general Web site, I am also responsible for supporting our use of technology in teaching and learning. This was the main reason I abandoned PR for IT. To me, there is no higher calling than teaching, and I have immense admiration for anyone who does it well. I also think it is one of the most interesting acts of communication we perform and love helping faculty with our Blackboard course management system, or teaching a workshop to help someone build a Web page, or trying to improve my own class.

While it was hard to leave the media success we were having, I knew the PR office was in good shape with Charlie Melichar, who was even more tech savvy than me and a natural at media relations. Beside, it's hard to beat the feeling of seeing someone conquer a fear or uncertainty about technology and say "I can do that," and know that you were the one who helped.

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