C-SPAN Founder Brian Lamb meets with SJC Scholars
Among many achievements, Brian Lamb is the founder of C-SPAN, a journalist, and has received both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Humanities Medal. He was gracious enough with his time to come and speak with the Scholars Program here at Saint John’s.
Forty one Saint John’s Scholars were in attendance for the meeting with Mr. Lamb, and before getting into talkin about his career, he went around and asked several of the students what their passion was in life. It may seem like a loaded question to ask young high schoolers, considering only a few have started thinking seriously about college, much less what they wanted to do after. The students rose to the occasion, with multiple mentioning they wanted to go into a medical field, while others were interested in fields such as mechanical engineering.
Mr. Lamb smoothly transitioned into his work as he mentioned a former teacher that he had, who had introduced him into the world of communications and politics. The point he tried to drive home about the business world is that money is always going to be a factor, and how the profit motive is something the students should be concerned about.
One student asked Mr. Lamb about his interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, and he responded with a great story on how Gorbachev kept trying to cut the interview short, but Mr. Lamb didn’t let him as the agreement was to do the full hour segment.
Mr. Lamb ended the talk expressing concern about the debt that the federal government had incurred during his life, and how it wasn’t fair to the younger generations to just throw it on them.
The meeting was an extremely enjoyable experience, as Mr. Lamb was engaging, informative, and gave students a chance to pick the brain of one of the most influential media members in the last several decades.
Nick Kettering, a scholar in attendance, said that he felt it was a good experience to listen to what Mr. Lamb has done firsthand.
Ms. Logan, who along with Mr. Maloney, set up the meeting Mr. Lamb, said that the reason they got Mr. Lamb to come and speak was, “Given how dramatically the political media climate has evolved since the inception of C-SPAN, we were hoping to hear Mr. Lamb’s perspective on that evolution.”