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7/31/2019 III. Profile Story
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Introduction III: Profile Story on Dr. Ernest Hakanen
This item is developed from coursework that required me to interview and to write a profile story on an
academic. It presents my writing skills as a journalist.
Research and Interview
For this project I decided my subject as Dr. Ernest Hakanen, a professor from the Department of Culture
and Communication at Drexel University. Then I did background research, prepared adequate questions,
arranged an interview meeting, and had a conversation with him for two hours. The profile story was
based on the transcription of the recording of the whole interview, notes I wrote down, and academic
materials Dr. Hakanen provided.
Narrative Style
Instead of being simply chronological, the story is organized through the four varied roles in his life as
farmer, scholar, teacher, and rocker. Apart from his academic achievements and teaching philosophy, the
story also describes his family, his childhood, his teenage dream as a rock star, his passion for agriculture,
his unique personality, his dissatisfaction with himself, and experiences that have shaped the person he
has become.
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Ernest Hakanen: Farmer, Scholar, Teacher, Rocker
Dr. Ernest Hakanen comes in and sits down, wearing a blue shirt and worn-out jeans,
with a slightly worried look on his face.
My dog is sick and its really bad, he sighs. Regarding his beloved pets, there are two
dogs, one cat, and 18 exotic chickens that came from Peru, Germany, and China. Chickens
calm me down and they lay eggs, he says cheerily. Besides this, he has a farm to take care of,
planting grapes and making wine; he owns eight antique tractors in his farm because he finds
them fascinating.
Apart from being a happy part-time farmer, Hakanen is a professor in the Department of
Culture and Communication at Drexel University, focusing on communication theory and
methods, mass media effects and history, and global media. Since his career began in 1991, he
has published 16 peer-reviewed articles in top journals across several fields, including
communication, psychology, information science, and music. He has also published four books,
of which his favorite is the single authored one, Branding the Teleself: Mass Media Effects
Discourse and the Changing Self that was published in 2007.
I think I really say something unique and important in that book, he says. I use the
history of media effects to look at the changes of emotion itself. I go through the different
shapes of the way we thought media affect us and what people thought of themselves in thattime of history. The concept of self and its relationship to media changed throughout the
history. In our field some people say that the self changed, the identity changed; some people
say that the identity doesnt exist anymore; some people say that the identity shifted. But no
one has any theoretical proof of it.
He says he thinks studying media effects is important because if we can learn what they
are, we can control it and use it. Compared with other countries, American mass media are
more commercialized, not politically controlled but more politicized.
Its a bad thing if it makes the internal ourselves a product, but its a part of American
identity, he says.
Hakanen is in the middle of being promoted from associate to full professor. As the part
of the promotion process, his work has been reviewed by six professors at his department. In
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the Deans recommendation letter to the Provost, it writes that Hakanens reviewers
commented that Hakanens work has had significant impact on the field since it is being cited
by top scholars in communication media studies and these citations appeared in various fields
and in different language.
This book certainly advances our understanding of the complexities and interactions
that results in our culturally specific formulations of self and identity. This is a useful, insightful,
and original book on a vital topic that is under-explored, as one of the reviewers is quoted in
the Deans letter.
Though he is glad that peers value his work, personally he is not very excited about the
promotion itself.
Its not as a big deal as it seems, he says. Maybe a little bit more financial wealth but
also more community work, which I do not like very much. You know, judging others.
He only likes teaching and doing research. My service at the lowest and highest levels
has always been student focused, he writes in the personal statement for the promotion. I
teach because I want to learn and to excite students from all majors about the importance of
communication in everyday life.
Hakanen, 52, and half-Finnish. He grew up in a working-class family at Johnstown, PA.
He is the first generation to achieve college degree in his family. His father was a coal minerwho worked underground. This Finnish Lutheran was very quiet, stubborn, kind, and generous
in a helpful way, he says. His mother was an American homemaker, doing part-time sewing
work. She was an outgoing woman who spent time with friends, chatting.
Young Hakanen was an average working-class kid, a popular one. Life was sports, music,
and girlfriends, he smiles. In addition to sports, he played guitar in rock band since he was16 in
high school. As a kid, it was his dream to be a rock star, just like Alice Cooper and his guitarist
Glen Buxton.
For political figures, President Nixon was his hero. He loved all kinds of ideas and
thoughts, which led to reading. Besides his favorite, all kinds of encyclopedia, he read tons of
magazines and newspapers about politics, culture and music in general. Everything he read has
to be based on the truth, he says.
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I would beg my dad to drive 30 miles to get The New York Times on Sunday, he
recalls. He didnt like it very much but we would go out to eat after church and get The New
York Times.
He is not religious, though, and isnt interested in theology, either. But he is really
intrigued by the cultural part of religion and belief system. Since most societies are driven by
religion, it helps him understand the way people think, he says. In 1996 he went to Hong Kong,
Japan, and Thailand, hoping to become a Buddhist because he likes Buddhist values. It upsets
him when he realized that he could never truly understand Buddhism because it can never be
part of his culture, he says. However, it can still help him understand how people from those
societies think.
After he got a bachelors degree in economics and education at the University of
Pittsburgh in 1980, he was a TV producer for six month. Then he became a high school teacher.
I taught the class Media and Society and become interested in that, he says. That
was when his interest in media communication began.
At that time, he was still trying to be a rock star and had been in several bands, for
example, Phoenix and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (not the existing famous ones!). He also needed the
money. When he was teaching in high school, he went to Washington, D.C. every weekend,
playing everywhere from clubs to weddings. His groups covered bands at that time, like TheCars and Journey, playing everything from rock to jazz, from pop to disco. Then he needed a
hand operation due to a genetic disease. This kept him away from guitar for a while. Finally, he
says, at age 25 he realized he could not make it anyway.
After working for over a year, he went to Indiana University of Pennsylvania to get
masters degree in history, with a focus on media history. With a growing interest in media
communication, in 1989 he achieved a doctorate in Communication at Temple University,
kicking off his career in this field. He received tenure in 1998, and continued publishing articles,
integrating his research with his teaching, he says.
As a teacher Hakanen has his own philosophy.
I try to teach my students not to take anything for granted, he says. I tell my students
that I cant make you smarter, but I can help you not to be stupid. He has taught 13 different
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undergraduate courses and five different graduate ones while at Drexel. His course evaluations
speak for themselves, and he was high regarded by his students and peers. As he writes in his
personal statement, in all of his courses, he scores well over 90 percent A on the questions:
The instructor treated students opinion and ideas with respect and The instructor
encouraged critical thinking.
People think Dr. Hakanen is an easy professor because he doesnt give a lot of
homework, but I think he just more cares about what you want to say, one of his students
Linda Ranieri says.
In 2006 he edited a book with his colleague Alexander Nikolaev, Leading to the 2006
Iraq War. In the book they analyzed the media coverage of 14 countries in the days leading to
the Iraq War. He has also edited another book, Signs of War, on signs and symbols of dissent
or support of war.
Personally, he says, he thinks America went to war for the wrong reasons and the
American people are too obsessed with their own values.
The Iraq war is unjustified, he says. Someone I met even thought we should go to
war because we have to teach people in other countries to take a bath. Some culture should be
left alone.
Though Hakanens rock star dream was gone, he never ceases his passion for music andstarted doing research on this topic, he says. He has published his research on adolescent use
of music for emotional management in the Keio Communication Review, a Japanese journal,
and the Asian Journal of Communication. He has also published an article in Popular Music,
a British music journal. The focus of this research is the Wests obsession with ratings and
rankings of everything from music to football teams.
Though the result of his promotion to full professor is predictable, since everything from
the internal report of review so far is positive, he says he still feels preoccupied and cant
concentrate on anything else.
I am sitting on my hands, you know, he says. After the promotion done, he plans to go
back to develop a new course, Music and Society, for the graduate students. He also received
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a book contract, the excess of American life, which is going to talk about how everything is
overdone in America. Right now, he is writing a chapter about humiliation on reality shows.
As for his own personality, Hakanen considers himself as down to earth, truthful, and
open-minded, but Professor Eva Thury, a colleague of him at communication department
describes him as smart but strange. He is extremely hard to catch as he doesnt like replying
emails and doesnt know or bother to set up voicemail with his cell phone.
Iam intellectually flexible but personally inflexible because I have my own schedule,
he explains. I talk because I have something to say, not because I feel I have to or just to be
nice, but I would like to be helpful and funny.
There is something he doesnt like about himself, he admits.
Sometimes I can get really angry because, you know, I am the only child and I have my
own way. It actually helps my career because I am such a driven person, but at the same time it
can fail my relationship. He divorced after five years of married life, and has no kids. When
looking back, he says, if he could change one thing in his life, he would value family earlier since
he is too career-driven.
I am good at studying things, but I am never good at managing things, he says.
END
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