With 41 years of sports reporting at The Washington Post under his belt, UW-Madison alumnus Leonard Shapiro is returning to his alma mater to teach a course in sports journalism.
Shapiro, who last taught a course at UW the spring semester of 2008, will ""always tell young journalists that nothing should ever surprise them, and there is no such thing as a dumb question, especially if you don't know the answer,"" as he wrote in his farewell column on Dec. 30.
The course, Journalism 475, will cover the history of sports journalism, as well as current aspects of reporting and editing practices. It will also ""get into issues of ethics, libel, objectivity, fairness, diversity, the future of sports journalism and multi-media platforms, along with practical information on preparation, research, interviewing and job hunting,"" according to the course's syllabus.
Shapiro graduated from UW-Madison in 1968 and began reporting high school football scores at a part-time job at The Washington Post in 1969.
He moved up the ladder at the Post, and has covered every Super Bowl since 1972, among the 7,400 bylines Shapiro has had in his career.
