Veteran Reporter Passes Wisdom to Future Journalists

By Paige Cantrell

Photo by Clifford S. Cheney IV

The former news editor of the Asia Wall Street Journal sits in his nook on the seventh floor of the Jesse H. Jones Communication building at the University of Texas, bespectacled and typing on his computer. With one determinedly professional glance over his rimless glasses, it is clear that Rusty Todd did not see many missed deadlines at the Journal. But ask him about his bass guitar or his favorite movies—1,000 Clowns, The Ruling Class, Animal House, Caddy Shack and Airplane— and the same blue eyes lose some of their “let’s get down to business” intensity.

“I’m realizing I’m too old to be in the ring,” Todd, the 57-year-old professor of journalism, says about the newsroom, that strange place somewhere between a locker room and a boardroom. The chance to teach at his undergrad alma mater, UT, was dropped on Todd “like a bomb,” after nine years at the Asia Journal. So he swapped his editorial punching gloves for lab hours and returned to UT in 1993.

When Todd first traversed the 40 acres in 1972, he was interested in meteorology and astrology, but instead pursued a degree in journalism, along with government, due to his “short attention span” and interest in the news that stemmed from his stint on his high school newspaper. “Journalism is still a good field for people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” he says.

And there are a few other things Todd almost did or would have done: He would still be in school if someone would pay him, he could have been a professor at the University of Wisconsin instead of moving to Asia, he would have worked for the Journal for free if he could afford it, and he would ideally spend his life living six months in Hong Kong and six months in Austin.

Of his self-declared hometowns—Burkburnett, Texas where he was born and raised; Austin where he passes on his wisdom to future journalists; Hong Kong where he was stationed as news editor; and New York City of which he considers himself a “touch and go resident”—Todd enjoys the change of pace of living in Austin where his first name, Rusty, is just a shade darker than UT’s burnt orange and is the same color as the trails he regularly hikes and bikes. “Austin is almost too comfy,” he considers. “Compared to New York it’s like living in your bath robe and slippers.”

Other than simply reveling in the success of his students as they find jobs in “the ring”, Todd is the copy editor at the Texas Observer and spends his time in Austin bird watching and keeping a wildflower log. The only other place in the U.S. where Todd would want to live now is in his beloved Bay Area where he spent his days working toward his 1982 doctorate at Stanford University and jamming to the Grateful Dead on their own turf.

Due to Todd’s busy and flight-filled lifestyle—he travels to New York for work on the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund so much he says it “feels like going to South Austin or something”—he is constantly crossing borders, in various aspects of his life.

Todd, a “foodie,” declares he will eat food anywhere, which he backs up with his list of travels to almost everywhere, from Thailand to Prague. When he is not cooking for his family, perhaps with some international flair, Todd practices with his band, Shake the Bushes, every two weeks.

Although Shake the Bushes, which he explains is not a political statement but a reference to having to shake the trees during hunting season when doves are not flying, play mostly their own music, they have been known to tune up to the song Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Todd plays the electric bass for the four-member rock group, one of whom Todd has played with since 1966 when they were high school sophomores in West Texas in a band called Sons of American Mothers. Aside from practicing with the Bushes every two weeks, Todd has lately been working on his guitar skills and singing “Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl…” He is memorizing the Marty Robbins song so he can participate in a “cowboy campout where we sit around and play cowboy songs” which he will be attending in six weeks.

It seems as if Todd has found his niches and pulls his own weight to keep Austin weird. He says the relocation to Texas has been wonderful for his wife, Sarah, and two daughters, Martha who just graduated from Columbia University and Catherine who attends Westlake High School, Todd says. However, Todd admits to missing everything about working for the Asia Wall Street Journal, including the 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. hours he worked while in Hong Kong. “I got to choose which stories went where which was a great tightrope to be on every night,” he says. Todd also misses more “normal” things like the deadlines, pressure and standard of work.

“You walk in that door and you are automatically 50 percent better than you are outside,” he says.

Ironically, Todd is back to doing what got his foot through that magical door in the first place—teaching. After earning his Ph.D. from Stanford, Todd more than multi-tasked while simultaneously he worked as the city editor for the Columbia Daily Missourian, was an assistant professor at the University of Missouri, and was flying to Austin to help the Austin American-Statesman set up its politics desk. Todd was using the Wall Street Journal’s writing technique as city editor and teaching it to his students at Missouri, he says. After the Journal hired a few of his students the paper wanted to hire the source of all of the knowledge, they wanted Yoda on their side.

So how did Todd become a master? His “cumulative experience and good luck” and time spent after college in Washington D.C. working as an aide to U.S. Rep. J.J. Pickle. From Pickle, Todd learned a lot about life and such “Pickle-isms” as “Never respond to a blow you can absorb” and “Learn to respond to specific, negative feedback.”

Todd’s favorite project thus far has been leading the 1992 team that created the Dow Jones Emerging Markets Report. “It probably will be there long after I’m dead,” he says. “But maybe not.”

Currently, Todd is brushing up on his Mandarin Chinese as he prepares to accomplish another feat. He will pack up again and spend next year on sabbatical from UT to return to Hong Kong where he will work on setting up a master’s degree in business journalism at the University of Hong Kong.

“The theme is that living a life of almost no direction can still lead to success,” he says, summing up his own interview like a seasoned pro.