THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409190202
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Maybe journalism can be a lucrative profession after all.
The top-paid speaker in the Old Dominion University President's Lecture Series this year is not a former deputy director of the CIA or an aide to Jimmy Carter, but a PBS correspondent.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a reporter for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia, will get $12,500 for her talk in March. That's the same amount that former Vice President Dan Quayle got when he spoke at ODU last April.
Second on the fee scale is another journalist, Susan Faludi, who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting at the Wall Street Journal and wrote a best-selling book on feminism, ``Backlash.'' Faludi, who will lead off the lecture series Thursday night, is getting $9,000.
On the low end of the scale are Bobby Ray Inman ($2,000), a former CIA deputy director who was nominated by President Clinton to be secretary of defense but later withdrew his name, and education policy analyst Myron Lieberman ($1,500).
As a state-supported institution, ODU is required to disclose all payments - including speakers' fees - upon request. The annual breakdown has offered a glimpse of who's hot and who's not on the speaking circuit. It's also irritated some students who wonder whether speakers should be getting five-figure payments as the university grapples with multimillion-dollar budget cuts and larger-than-average tuition increases.
Lawrence Shibler, who graduated recently, said he's enjoyed most of the lectures, but he said some of the fees were ``exorbitant. I don't think they should be giving them more than $1,500 or $2,000.''
Junior Vivian Harris didn't care about the fees, but she wondered about the quality of the speakers. Like Shibler, she didn't recognize any of the names for this year. ``As opposed to having so many noninteresting people,'' she said, ``maybe they should have fewer people, but more interesting. That way, when people get the fliers, they'll say, `Gee, I really want to see this person,' instead of having your professor tell you to go.''
The trouble, said ODU economics Professor Louis H. Henry, who coordinates the lecture series, is that ``you're not going to get household-word-type-people for under 10 thousand. We try to get one big-name speaker, if possible, every year, but when they start talking 15, 20, 25 thousand, you say, `Get out of here.' I think the fees are out of sight.''
Bill Fargo, director of college sales for the Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau in Boston, which represents Lieberman, said ``household name'' status is key in setting a price. Another factor is how eager some celebrities are to travel the circuit: If they're not interested in spending much time on the road, he said, they jack up their prices to avoid nonstop engagements.
Fargo said Hunter-Gault's fee wasn't surprising: ``She has a lot to bring to the table. She's not just a TV personality; she's also a historical figure. She's one of the first African Americans to integrate the University of Georgia.''
Of Faludi, he said: ``She's got a lot of spin. She's still getting a lot of publicity. She's one of the people of the moment.''
Henry said the fees of both speakers are generally about $2,000 higher, but he bargained them down. And ODU got a deal with Inman, he said, because he's friends with former business dean William Wallace.
ODU is spending a total of $41,000 on the series this school year. The money is coming primarily from private donations and profits from the bookstore, Vice President Kay A. Kemper said. It does not come from state funds or tuition revenue, she said.
``It's not much money for what it does for the university,'' Henry said. ``You bring in somebody who says something important about our lives, our past or our future - students should have an opportunity to hear that.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Hunter-Gault
Graphic
THE LINEUP
These are the speakers and dates in Old Dominion University's
President's Lecture Series. All lectures will begin at 8 p.m. in the
Mills Godwin Building. They will be free and open to the public.
Susan Faludi Sept. 22
Bobby Ray Inman Oct. 11
Ronald Takaki Nov. 15
Myron Lieberman Jan. 19
Walter Williams Feb. 8
Charlayne Hunter-Gault March 16
Bob Beckel April 13
by CNB