MORGANTOWN — Seek the truth, no matter where it leads.
For Ron Nixon, it led from Lauderdale, Miss. (population 270) to the far corners of the earth as an award-winning journalist.
As it turns out, it also led him to Morgantown on a warm Friday morning where he delivered the keynote address for some 180 graduates of WVU’s Reed College of Media.
The commencement ceremony was the first of seven held Friday as WVU recognizes nearly 4,500 Mountaineers in the Class of 2022. A total of 17 ceremonies will be held this weekend.
For Nixon, Friday was an opportunity to share his truth with the future colleagues and media professionals assembled on the WVU Coliseum floor.
“We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge,” Nixon said, quoting author John Naisbitt. “So much of the information that we get is actually devoid of truth.”
Nixon previously spent 14 years at The New York Times covering issues like border security, immigration and violent extremism, before moving on to his current position as international investigations editor for the Associated Press.
He refuted the notion that we live in a “post-truth” era where “fake news” and political cheerleading have replaced honest reporting.
“The truth doesn’t take sides. The truth isn’t political. But the truth isn’t always pleasant,” Nixon said.
And the truth is, for the graduates walking across commencement stages all across the country this spring, a virus and our collective response to it have dominated much of their college experience.
“I don’t really want to say unfortunately, but first and foremost, probably COVID,” Cleveland native Joey Vedda said, reflecting on the last four years.
“It had such a big impact on everything. I try not to view it as a negative. It is what it is. It happened. We got through it.”
Now Vedda is looking forward to turning his Interactive Design for Media degree into a career in game design, which will likely take him out of West Virginia.
He plays coy when asked if he’s walking around with the next big idea in gaming.
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it,” he asks with a smile. “Come back to me in a couple years and we’ll see.”
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