Posted May 24, 2017
Story and photos by Hailey Ingraham, reprinted from InterCom
Photo above: Nachlinger advises a student during the morning newsroom meeting
Fourteen years ago, you could often find senior instructor Harvie Nachlinger in his closet-sized office outside the newsroom in the Coliseum. “I didn’t plan on staying here,” he admitted, after explaining how he fell into a teaching position as a first semester graduate student at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Andrea Tanner was on maternity leave from teaching, so Nachlinger was tasked with her advanced reporting class. Today, this well-respected senior instructor is housed in a much nicer office in the relocated journalism school. He will retire at the end of the academic year.
When he started teaching at the University of South Carolina, Nachlinger was new to the job, but he was no stranger to the newsroom. With 40 years of journalism experience at seven stations in six states, he was eager to share his knowledge with aspiring young journalists, so he went in pursuit of a master’s degree at the University of South Carolina. Nachlinger, alongside senior instructor Rick Peterson, now teaches the program’s capstone senior semester for broadcast students. Nachlinger explained how this program, that requires students to produce every element of the daily newscast, was in part the reason he chose to pursue his master’s degree here.
He describes his teaching style as real-world, and his previous students agree. “He was meticulous in a way that made you think through every step you do as a reporter and a producer, because there is so much to it. Having that instilled in you early on makes a world of a difference,” said 2016 graduate Malique Rankin, a reporter at KXMB-TV in North Dakota.
Alongside Rankin in North Dakota, fellow 2016 alumna Avery Bofinger was able to produce a two-hour newscast by herself on her first day, and she credits that to the teachings of Nachlinger and Peterson.
“Working with the students makes me more aware of what is going on in the world outside of the general hard news aspect,” Nachlinger admits when describing his favorite part about teaching.
“It keeps me abreast with things I probably wouldn’t know anything about, like a pitch on a story about Jay-Z’s latest tweet.” Nachlinger also had the opportunity to teach a week- long course in studio operations to 10 practicing journalists in Estonia last summer. He enjoyed how he was able to share American journalism strategies with the country that, prior to the visit, was primarily exposed to restrictive Russian-style producing.
Nachlinger — the winner of two regional Emmy awards for writing and reporting, numerous state broadcast association awards and the Texas Medical Association Award for Outstanding Medical Reporting — will retire near Gainesville, Florida. He wants to travel with his wife and finally dust off his woodworking tools. “I only planned to be here for two years, so I bought a very small house here, and we’re still in that small house,” Nachlinger joked. “I will be building a fairly large woodworking shop out back in the Florida home.”