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Former Chair,��Department of Journalism •��Amateur Jazz Musician

When Mardi Gras rolls around, Paul Voakes grabs his tenor saxophone and joins a party band. His horn brings a New Orleans vibe to the music. Musical performance is a new experience for him. He’s a longtime fan of the saxophone—especially in jazz—but just started lessons two years ago. “It’s a struggle,” he admits, “but I need to be a student of something all the time in my life.”

Just as learning and improvisation are key to Voakes’ jazz, they are key to his journalism. As a reporter and editor for the��San Jose Mercury News��in the 1980s, he often followed new information in different directions in his stories. Like jazz, it was a bit of a performance, with tight deadlines and an audience of hundreds of thousands.

As a child, Voakes loved being the first person to learn something new and tell others about it. As a college freshman, he planned to become an actor, but his curiosity and knack for writing drew him to journalism.

“Journalism is like jazz—improvisation and performance.”

- Paul Voakes

Next, as a professor, he remained a student, eagerly adopting the industry’s new tools while applying journalism fundamentals such as accuracy and ethics��to new media platforms.

In a recent ethics class, for instance, he explained the rules of publishing people’s pictures. His students brought up the case of a college football player who sued a video game manufacturer for using his image without permission.����The students’ debate over whether athletes should be paid when their images are used was Voakes’ favorite discussion of the semester.

“The great thing about teaching is that I get to work with intelligent, young, media-savvy people,” he says. “I’m never sure what direction any class will take us. Quite often my students end up teaching me as much as I teach them.”

Paul Voakes retired in December 2017.