By Gary E. Frank

As a student at Hartford’s Weaver High School, John Yearwood ’86 (CLAS) hopped on a bus and traveled to the University of Connecticut’s main campus in Storrs because he had some questions he wanted to have answered.

It was not the first time the student had visited the campus, but the answers he found that day still resonate with him.

“Because of my interest in journalism and in UConn, I went there to take a look around,” says Yearwood, who has been world editor of The Miami Herald since 2003.

“[Evan Hill], the head of the department, sat me down and talked with me about what to expect in the journalism business and what I’d be likely to face over time.”

It was, he says, one of the “most profound conversations” he has ever had.

“I still remember most of it,”recalls Yearwood, among a handful of minority editors in the country responsible for national and international coverage.

“Professor Hill told me that I’d be entering a profession where some people might offer me a job because I’m black. ‘Don’t get angry,’ he said. ‘Just surprise them.’ Have I been offered jobs since I left UConn because of my race? I honestly don’t know. I would like to think I was the best qualified of the people who applied. Regardless of the reason, I still hear Professor Hill’s voice in the back of my mind saying, ‘Surprise them.’”

After 20 years as an award-winning journalist, no one should be surprised by Yearwood, whose career has taken him around the globe and into encounters with major players on the world stage, such as Nelson Mandela, Lady Margaret Thatcher, Colin Powell, President George W. Bush and former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

On an early weekday afternoon in late July, Yearwood’s day had already included a meeting of the newspaper’s managers, the daily morning editorial planning session, a meeting with an editor of another department, telephone calls to a Herald stringer in Jerusalem and a reporter in Washington, and more calls regarding the newspaper’s upcoming conference on Caribbean and Latin American affairs and the national convention of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), for which he serves as treasurer.

“And it’s barely two o’clock,” says Yearwood, as his computer’s singsong tone announces the arrival of new e-mail messages.

“On any day, there are so many different things going on. Either here or abroad, there’s always something interesting happening somewhere.”

On this particular day, “interesting” included the latest developments in the armed clash between Israel and Hezbollah, a killer heat wave in California and continued carnage in Baghdad.

John Yearwood, center, during a morning budget meeting at The Miami Herald newsroom.

Photo by David Adams

There is also the announcement of a presidential visit to South Florida, which meant reaching a reporter who had gone to Capitol Hill to inform her of a “slight redirection of her priorities for the day,” and talking with the Herald’s Jerusalem-based stringer, who had just interviewed Floridians evacuated to Cyprus from the chaos in Beirut.

The typical workday for an editor at one of the 25 largest newspapers in the country is nothing if not frenetic.

Yearwood visited UConn for the first time through a high school program that took promising students on tours of college campuses.

“Here was this huge campus where they taught anything that you might be interested in,” he recalls.

“The people I met on the first tour were warm and welcoming. I remember thinking that here was a place that was large in size yet still felt small enough for me, a place where I could thrive.”

A political science major at UConn, Yearwood threw himself into his studies and into being an active student journalist, writing for the Daily Campus, serving as the paper’s student ombudsman, believed to be the first for any student newspaper in the country, and becoming public affairs director for WHUS Radio.

It was a time filled with campus news, including the last days of John DiBiaggio’s presidency and the inauguration of John Casteen as UConn’s president.

He also read the news, aired live broadcasts and hosted a weekly talk show for the radio station.

“It was great fun,” Yearwood says, but at one point, he says, he struggled with balancing the demands of academics and journalism.

He read the book Dateline: White House, by the legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has covered every president since John F. Kennedy.

“I couldn’t put it down,” says Yearwood.

“After reading it, I called her. She advised me to ‘Hang in there and keep doing it.’ I met her years later, and she said that she remembered our chat.”

Yearwood says the generosity of people such as Thomas is in part why he has been so active in NABJ and with mentoring young reporters.

“I believe that it’s important to give back if one has been successful. If we fail to give back and share what we know, then we will fail the next generation of journalists,” he says.

After graduation, Yearwood worked for the Associated Press in Hartford and Oklahoma City before moving on to the Dallas Morning News, where he began working on international stories, covering news from the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and Europe.

During his travels to Africa, Yearwood met one of his heroes, Mandela, the South African political prisoner turned statesman.

“I was with a few journalists and friends from the [United Nations]. We visited him at his home outside Johannesburg to talk about poverty eradication. But we talked about a number of issues over an hour or so with him. It was truly an amazing experience and the highlight of my journalistic career,” says Yearwood.

“A close second was being in the ballroom at the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg when Mandela formally declared victory in [South Africa’s] first multi-party elections. What an electrifying night!”

After 10 years working in Dallas, Yearwood decided to leave daily journalism when there was an opportunity to return to his family’s roots in Trinidad.

He became president and chief executive officer of IBIS International, a media relations and marketing firm headquartered in Trinidad that published a magazine, also titled IBIS, where he served as editor and publisher.

“The experience opened my eyes to the business world,” says Yearwood.

“On the journalistic side, I felt good about being able to tackle some serious issues facing Trinidad at the time, such as race and crime.”

Managing and editing a magazine also helped Yearwood to understand what he wanted to do with his career. “I realized how much impact an editor can have,” he says.

After two years in Trinidad, Yearwood returned to the United States, first as an assistant editor of governmental and political coverage and later national and international editor at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from 1999 until 2001, and then to his current position at the Herald.

Eventually, Yearwood hopes to run his own media company.

“More than anything, I started my career in journalism to give a voice to those who feel they have lost theirs. There are so many people whose ‘voices’ would not be heard if it were not for those of us in the media,” Yearwood says.

“I particularly enjoy reporting on historically underserved communities. I still have that drive today. Perhaps that’s why I’ve reported so much over my career from Africa and why I push for stories now that portray people and communities in a three-dimensional way.”