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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III. Profile Story