Jody Dean is big and sort of awkward-looking. The MISD administrators across the room are dressed in formal business clothes—ties, slacks, the whole shebang. Jody’s wearing a sweater with a popped collar, his hat is turned backwards. He doesn’t look like a journalist, he hates the word. He’s a storyteller.

“I’ve been that, I’ve won awards at it. The only people who call journalists ‘journalists’ are other journalists,” Jody said. “If you get into the news business, no one is ever gonna see you in Target and say ‘Hey you’re that journalist.’ They don’t say that. They say ‘Ah, you’re that guy on TV.’”

Jody, morning show host of KLUV and the voice of the Dallas Cowboys, has been a storyteller, in sound, sight and ink, since high school. He made his first appearance on television before he could drive, and has continued broadcasting throughout his life.

Broadcast Journalism teacher Jim Cockrell, a friend of Jody’s, asked him to come speak to the young storytellers of Legacy about his career.

“Who, what, when, where, why, how. Congratulations, if you can do that you are now a journalist,’” Mr. Dean said. “My job is to tell ‘em what’s right. That’s journalism, that’s storytelling. That’s the oldest tradition we have in the human experience.”

For an hour and a half, Jody talked about how he defines his profession, and the way it is changing in today’s world. The advent of the Internet makes now a revolutionary time for media.

“It’s a great time to get into this business. It’s the best time since the 50s and 60s, back when we were just making it up as we went along,” Jody Dean said.

In college, Jody looked forward to only his broadcasting and football classes.

“I wasted my parents’ money for two years, but in those two years, I found that, gee, this was really a lot of fun,” Mr. Dean said. “You can really have fun being in the media—and not just in broadcasting, but in print.”

Jody’s book, Finding God in the Evening News , was published in 2004. The book goes in-depth into his experiences as a broadcaster, and how he relates them to his faith.

“It was a welcome break to have a local celebrity come and speak to us about his job,” Journalism Adviser Leland Mallett said. “I think he has the right idea for the future of media, especially student media.”