Coming Up: A Journalist in Space

Forget the Paris bureau. Goodby, Moscow. Who needs Rome? The ultimate foreign correspondent’s job for the most roving of reporters will be based in a small spaceship orbiting 218 miles above earth.

For it was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--not print and broadcast organizations--that began mailing out applications Monday to select the first journalist in space, and already an estimated 2,700 forms have been posted to starry-eyed scribes.

The criteria are simple. Applicants must be working journalists--photographers, editorial cartoonists, broadcasters, columnists, reporters--with at least five years of full-time experience. U.S. citizenship is required, and the applicant’s news agency must agree to financially support him or her for six months. In addition, a minimal physical examination must be passed, but wearing a hearing aid or glasses will not preclude an applicant from qualifying. The ability to type upside down will not hurt, either.

The department of communications at Cal State Fullerton is among five journalism schools nationwide chosen to help make the selection. When Edgar P. Trotter, department chair, was called by a spokesman from the NASA Journalist in Space Project and asked if his school would like to participate, the professor said he “waited all of three seconds and said: ‘You got it damn right.’ ”

“We’re excited about this and think it’s a tremendous mark for the program,” Trotter said, “but we’re cloudy on the details. . . . We do know that there’s one real dilemma--choosing between the broadcast and print people.”

That and other specifics of the selection process will be worked out Friday, when Trotter and department heads from the other four journalism schools meet in St. Louis to discuss the project. Cal State Fullerton is the western headquarters of the Journalist in Space Project and will oversee applications from Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

The first of those forms was mailed Monday night, according to Al Scroggins, dean emeritus of the College of Journalism at the University of South Carolina and the project’s chief program officer. So far, none has been completed and returned.

All applications must be postmarked by Jan. 15, “and we anticipate (the journalist) will fly in the fall of 1986,” Scroggins said. “There will be about 116 hours of training between May and August, and the participant and an alternate will be announced on April 17.”

NASA is looking for a journalist who can communicate broadly about experiences in space with audiences in the United States and around the world, Scroggins said. To test the candidates’ writing ability, the application includes two essay questions:

- “A major purpose of the Journalist in Space Project is to identify a journalist who can communicate the unique experience of space travel to the broad national and international public. If you are selected, how will you attempt to fulfill that purpose?”

- “As space travel continues to develop, journalists may expect even greater opportunities to report from space. Looking 10 to 20 years into the future, speculate on how journalists will use those opportunities. What will the ability to report regularly from space mean to journalists, to news-gathering and to the public whom the journalists serve?”

Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt won’t have an advantage, Scroggins contends, since the competition will not favor the broadcast media, such as television.

“The process is designed to give every working journalist the same chance,” Scroggins said. “It is designed not to give anyone an edge. But we only have one seat, so it’s obvious that three anchorpersons can’t go, though one might.”

So far, candidates from most of the major media around the country have called or written for applications. The project has fielded requests from ABC, NBC and CBS (which alone asked for 50 forms), CNN, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and hundreds of television and radio stations, other newspapers, magazines and photojournalists from around the country.

Interested journalists can receive an application by writing to the Journalist in Space Project, the Assn. of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communications, College of Journalism, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C. 29208-0251, or by calling (803) 777-5007.