Dr. Eddie Glenn, a 1988 Heavener graduate, visited Mrs. Kasandra Lovell’s Spiro High School newspaper class recently.
Eddie Glenn is the Assistant Professor of Media Communication at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, but he is also so much more: a professional speech giver, a lover of many niche topics such as American Indigenous political communication, music as rhetoric, and playing greatest hits of the 20th century at farmers’ markets. More on the topic of music, he has four albums of original music that he’s posted. That’s not his only achievement, as he has a Ph.D. in Political Communication and Public Address.
Dr. Eddie came to talk to my Newspaper class at Spiro High School on September 9, 2026. He was quite interested because not many schools have a newspaper class any longer. He spoke to us about his experience with journalism; he had taken a journalism class at Carl Albert in 1989, which he ended up dropping out of due to a preference for a political science class. He enjoyed the style of writing in the political science class, which was more analytic and not as fast-paced as the journalism class.
After his years at Carl Albert, he went to Northeastern State University, where he earned his Bachelors and his Masters. He then decided to work on his Doctorate at the University of Kansas, finishing in 2014. While at NSU, he became a campus photographer, which led to his job at the Tahlequah Press as their photographer. He worked mainly as a photographer and darkroom technician from 1994-2001. In 2001, he began to focus on writing for the Press, after his newspaper story series on the Cherokee Nation constitutional crisis got picked up by the Associated Press.
He left the Tahlequah Press in 2007 to focus on his postgraduate work at Kansas University, but he still occasionally writes for their magazine. While at the Tahlequah Press, he learned a very valuable lesson that he taught to my newspaper class: that your writing can have an importance to other people, maybe even more than it does to yourself.
He was assigned to go to a Quilting Competition and write an article about it. He really was not keen on doing so. The county home extension agent pulled him aside and told him that his story on the competition could lead to one of the best days of the women competing…some of whom were 90 years old. Writing this story about them could honor them so much and mean so much that it could make their entire day, or life. Hearing this, Dr. Eddie realized that words and writing can bring such joy, and that it is one of the best gifts you can ever give to another person. The ability to give this gift to others inspires him, and he believes that every young writer should learn that lesson and hold that virtue.
More of his advice that he gifted to my class is to have a large range of topics, and to talk to people about those topics, as there is a chance to enhance your knowledge on that particular subject. He has benefited from this advice. His knowledge of Indigenous politics allowed his articles on the Cherokee Nation constitutional crisis to be picked up by the Associated Press; some of his best stories- like one on D-Day veteran Willis Henderson- came from his conversational skills and knowledge on various subjects, and he has a whole career in talking about and teaching others on many topics as a professor.
Dr. Eddie Glenn is a great example of how being open, communicative, knowledgeable, and well-versed can benefit your career and allow you to give wonderful gifts to others. His experience and expertise greatly inspired me and the rest of my class, and his story motivates us. He proved to me that journalism is a gift and skill not to be taken for granted.
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