No girls allowed. The Buffalo
(N.Y.) Courier-Express wouldn't let her deliver the newspaper, so instead
she became the youngest girl in the newspaper office, sending bills to the
carriers instead of becoming one.
When her shift at the newspaper ended, 15-year-old Ruth Ann
Geisdorfer often hopped on a city bus and emerged a few blocks later as Teen DJ
Karin Kelly, spinning records and doing her first call-in talk shows on
Buffalo's WYSL-FM.
And so a multimedia career unfolded. As Ruth Ann Leach, she
became one of Nashville television's first female news anchors, hosted talk
radio on the legendary clear-channel WLAC-AM and wrote columns for the Nashville Banner.
When she married money manager
William F. Harnisch, Ruth Ann
traded in daily deadlines for a career in philanthropy, but she didn't forget
what it was like to be a financially struggling reporter.
The Harnisch Family Foundation
recently gave Poynter $50,000 to serve journalists who want to learn and don't
have the resources to attend professional development programs. The gift funds
technology for "Studio H," a means for live audio and visual connections
between Poynter faculty and newsrooms.
It also expands Poynter Webinars from audio with on-screen images to
include real-time viewing of presenters and video material.
"Journalism is still a field ripe
for the individual careerist, even in these times of great upheaval in the
media business. Anyone with talent, skill and moxie can still create a career,
and the new media opportunities of today create unimagined possibilities for the
person with drive and desire," Harnisch said. "Nelson Poynter's vision of
investing philanthropic dollars in high-quality training for journalists is one
I'm honored to support. Poynter offers opportunities for any journalist to get
top career-building information at a very reasonable price."
The Harnisch Family philanthropies
support journalistic initiatives through grants to the Society of Professional
Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Committee to Protect
Journalists, and others.
However, Harnisch’s main philanthropic focus is
encouraging the giving spirit in others. Other projects of The Harnisch Family
Foundation include Thrill!onaires.org, The Dignitarian Dialogues and The Foundation
of Coaching. The Foundation has given several hundred grants since its
inception in 1998.
Ruth Ann's philanthropy is informed by the
memory of the first career advice she ever got in media: "Keep your suitcase
packed." In other words, be prepared, period.
Harnisch recalls that she got most
of her journalistic education directly from
mentors, including Chris Clark, recently retired after 41 years on the
air at Nashville’s WTVF-TV, and from Jack Gunter, a photographer who became vice president at the now-defunct Nashville
Banner.
"In my first TV job, I made so
little I qualified for food stamps," Harnisch says. "I couldn't have afforded
to pay for a class no matter how cheap it might have been. That's why I'm
interested in helping people in that situation today." In 2006, she donated
scholarships to Poynter television courses led by Al Tompkins. This time she's contributing in
the belief that technology offers new educational opportunities.
Harnisch gives without specific
expectations of those who benefit. "My only hope is that they become so
successful and grateful that they, too, will be generous with their resources."
The little girl who wasn't allowed
to deliver the newspaper has found a way to deliver to the news people -–
through Poynter.
