Sage advice from Inquirer editor Bill Marimow

It's the season of sage advice, as college graduates across the nation receive their degrees and hear from commencement speakers who have gone on to make a success of their own lives.

At Trinity College in Connecticut, students got a special treat on May 22 - they heard from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bill Marimow, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He advised them to "find a mentor," "make sure to contribute to the public good" and "learn to listen."

Marimow, a 1969 grad of Trinity, didn't try to dazzle students with stories of his many journalistic feats - and he could have. He instead shared his humble beginnings and touted what he learned from others.

I especially liked his challenge to the class of 2016: Write a thank you letter to a professor, a coach or staff member at Trinity "who has enriched your life over these last four years" and tell them specifically what they did to help.

That's bound to lead to a lot of students at least thinking about that special mentor and the lessons he or she imparted - and teach a lot mentors what it is they do that especially resonates with students.

Check out Bill's commencement speech below.

As Bill likes to say, savor it.

Here's the full text.

Thank you very much, President Berger-Sweeney for inviting me to speak here at Trinity College today. And thank you to my former fellow Trinity trustees, the faculty, members of the class of 2016 and – equally important – the parents of the class of 2016. Before I begin, please join me in giving yourselves a rousing round of applause.

As I stand here today on this beautiful quad, I've been trying to recall precisely how I felt on that day in 1969 when I was sitting where you are today. My Dad and my Mom were seated behind us. I know that I had high hopes for the future – high hopes that were set against my fear and uncertainty of the unknown.

I now know – given the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – that my four years on this wonderful campus had permanently enriched my life. Trinity's gifts to me included these:

Lifelong friendships. Friendships that have grown stronger over the years despite the distance that separates us. In fact, somewhere out on our quad, several of my classmates are here today – including one friend who came all the way from Laguna Beach.

Trinity also endowed me with the ability to express myself with clarity and sometimes fluidity in writing and in speech. Our professors were peerless teachers who took the time to review our work in depth and to talk with us about our lives and our goals. Professors like Kenneth Cameron, a world renowned expert on Henry David Thoreau, whose eagle-eyed critiques of our writing struck fear in the hearts of every freshman in his English classes; John Dando, who taught Shakespeare with the dramatic flair of an actor at the Globe Theater; Hugh Ogden, who had the soul of a poet and the meticulous editing skills of a copy desk chief at The New Yorker; and Andrew Turnbull, who edited the letters of Scott Fitzgerald and wrote a major Fitzgerald biography.

On graduation day 1969,  I had no job. I'd been accepted at law school, but I knew that if I started law school, I might get drafted to serve in the Vietnam War, where one of our friends from the class of 1968 had already been killed in combat. My academic career here at Trinity had been – to put it kindly – checkered. Five semesters on the Dean's List but three others that demonstrated clearly my lack of maturity and readiness for college. Until I looked it up, I had no idea who delivered our commencement speech. Nor could I remember anything that he – or she – had to say .

So in the short time I've allotted to myself today, my goal is to offer you – the class of 2016 – a few words of guidance that might help you as you embark on your career or graduate school or an adventure of another kind. One important point to remember: This is the time that you can best afford to sample all that life has to offer.

I have three themes today, and they are all interrelated: First, find a mentor – find a mentor at your first job and in all the jobs you ever have. Second, make sure to contribute to the public good. It will enhance the world we live in and it will enhance your own lives. And, last but not least: Learn to listen. It's a lost art and an invaluable skill.

When I was 22, I first walked into a newsroom. It was the Evening Bulletin of Philadelphia – then the biggest afternoon paper in America. Reporters were pounding out stories on their typewriters; wire machines clacked out the news of the day, and frazzled editors shouted to copy boys to grab their stories. "Copy down," they bellowed.  Cigarette smoke wafted through the air. J. A. Livingston, The Bulletin's syndicated economics columnist summoned me into his big office for an interview to become his assistant – a glorified job that would require me to review his twice-weekly column, prepare charts and graphs and handle a variety of clerical tasks.  All for the princely sum of $145 a week. Mr. Livingston was 65; I was 22.

 Livingston had won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1965 and the framed citation from Columbia University hung on the wall behind his desk. During our interview, every time Livingston looked down at his notes,  I looked up at the Pulitzer Prize, trying to read what it said. Every time he looked up, I looked down. I was awestruck.

My first day on the job, I walked over to the graphic arts department to review the chart for Livingston's next column with the director,  Bob Weir. He greeted me and then said: "I hope you'll enjoy your short time here. Most people only last a few months. Mr. Livingston's gone through four or five assistants in the last year."  That talk served as my "Miranda warnings."

I was determined not to meet the same fate as my predecessors. I vowed to arrive every day before Mr. Livingston and never to leave the newsroom until after he was gone. The work was grueling and challenging. Our work week often spanned six or seven days. In that first year, I can recall traveling to Washington to interview George Shultz, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the old Executive Office Building. Much to my surprise, I actually had some meaningful questions to ask him.

Thanks to Mr. Livingston, I'd learned as much about economics in a few short months as I had learned about Shakespeare from Professor Dando. In July 1972, Mr. Livingston left The Bulletin, where he had worked for 25 years to join The Inquirer. I came along as the Class D minor league player to be named later.

The lesson from my relationship with Mr. Livingston is this: Make sure to find a mentor; the more demanding, the better.

Turning now to the present-day, I'm going to talk about Gerry Lenfest, who along with the late Lewis Katz – another  remarkable man -- purchased The Inquirer's parent company in May 2014 for $88 million. Lenfest is probably Philadelphia's greatest modern-day philanthropist. He has donated generously to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Curtis Institute of Music, his high school – Mercersburg Academy, his college, Washington & Lee and Columbia University, where he went to law school. But Gerry is not just a philanthropist. He's a visionary.

In January, he donated The Inquirer, the Daily News and our web site, Philly.com, to the Philadelphia Foundation. At the same time, he transformed the company into a public benefit corporation, meaning that the primary goal of our company is no longer maximizing profits but simply operating a viable business and having a strong, unwavering commitment to public service journalism. In making the donation, Gerry also created a foundation – the Institute for Journalism in New Media – and endowed it with $20 million. The purpose of the Institute is to fund investigative reporting projects for The Inquirer and Daily News and undertake research that will benefit all journalism during our transition from print journalism to the multimedia arena.

Why did Gerry do this? I'll quote him: "What would the city be without The Inquirer and Daily News? Of all the things I've done, this is the most important. Because of the journalism."

So the lesson in Gerry's generosity is this:  Contribute to the public good – whether it's your time or your money. And never forget the people and the places that fostered your growth along the way.

Which brings me to Gene Roberts, the editor who led The Inquirer to 17 Pulitzer Prizes in 18 years and then won one himself for his book, "The Race Beat."  Gene was my editor. He was a native son of North Carolina, whose journalism career took him from covering the farm beat for the Goldsboro News-Argus to chief of the New York Times Saigon bureau during the most intense years of the Vietnam War. By the time I met Gene – in fall 1972 – he was 40 years old. He had left a major job as national editor of The Times to take over The Inquirer, a mediocre newspaper, which had never won a Pulitzer Prize. Not one.

In that first year, Gene assigned me to the labor beat – a subject he'd covered for the Detroit Free Press. Even though the conversation I'm about to relate occurred more than 40 years ago, I still recall it vividly. In his North Carolinian drawl, Gene explained to me the fundamentals of covering the labor beat. "Bill," he said, "you gotta to use your news stories as the spark to ignite everything else – your profiles, your features, your trend stories, your news analyses and your investigative pieces." As I listened and dutifully took notes, I kept thinking that Gene was out of his mind. I was an English major from Trinity – not a beat reporter. Not only had I never written a "news analysis." I didn't even know what one was. Then Gene ended with a flourish: "And just remember the federal mediators. They will be your best sources." I walked out of Gene's office thinking that I should probably apply to graduate school. There was no way I would ever be able to develop a "source" – a "Deep Throat" like Woodward and Bernstein, who were deep into their Watergate investigation for the Washington Post.

Flash forward one year: I was in the office of the Federal Mediation Service in Center City Philadelphia, approaching weary negotiators at 5 a.m. as they shuffled toward the elevator after finally concluding a tentative agreement. I questioned them about the details of the agreement. The negotiators said they'd like to help, but they had to share that information with their members first – not The Inquirer. A few minutes later, federal mediator Bob Kyler, the architect of the agreement, emerged, smiling and smoking his Caminetto pipe. He called me into his office, cracked open two Michelob beers  and said this: "Bill, let me tell you the terms of the new contract. But you can't attribute it to me. Just write that you got it from "one participant in the talks."

"Wow," I thought to myself. I have a source! Unbelievable. Gene Roberts was right. The lesson in this story is to find someone like Gene in your first job and every job – and then listen carefully.

Listen carefully. And then make sure to believe in yourself as much as the person who is guiding your way.

In closing, I have a request to all of you in the class of 2016. As you leave this campus, I would ask you to think of a professor, a coach or a staff member here at Trinity who has enriched your life over these last four years. I would ask that you write that person a letter thanking them with specificity for what they've done to help you. That letter will be a gift – a gift that I guarantee will enhance their lives as much as their work has enhanced yours.

With that, I congratulate you all. And I urge you to savor it. Thank you very much.