Just call Mark
Rockwell (’84) a wireless wizard. Be it pagers, cellular phones,
satellite communications or the wireless Internet, Rockwell can give
you the lowdown. The telecommunications journalist was named bureau
chief of Wireless Week, a weekly newspaper that reports on all types
of wireless communications. Rockwell’s beat includes the wireless,
regulatory and legislative news and trends of the nation’s capitol,
including such bodies as the FCC, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court and
the White House.
A 15-year veteran
reporter, Rockwell values the on-job internships and experiences he
received at Harrisonburg’s Daily News-Record and the Waynesboro
News-Virginian. “I started out covering all the stories no one
else was willing to do,” he says, “like taking photos of
unusual looking vegetables.” He also remembers readers saying
things like, “Hey, don’t this potato look like Wynona Judd?”
or “Can you send a reporter out to take a ‘pitcher’
of this huge moth I got trapped in my garage?”
Following the footsteps
of his Associated Press reporter father, Rockwell has interviewed many
politicians and celebrities including Al Gore, Bill Gates and numerous
U.S. and state congressmen. He enjoys talking about how his father’s
work influenced him. “My father interviewed Elvis Presley before
the king went into the Army. I was impressed with his ability to talk
with people and then write about it.”
After writing his
first newspaper story, Rockwell became hooked on the process. “Seeing
your byline can’t be beat,” he says.
Rockwell earned
the 1996 American Business Press Jesse H. Neal Award for a feature he
wrote for Tele.com Magazine. The article covered connections of underprivileged
people, schools and libraries to the Internet. In 1984, he joined Phillips
Publishing as a telecom reporter and after three years moved to MIS
Week. He has written for Communications Daily and worked in public relations
for GTE Space-net and NEC America.
In 1995 Rockwell
returned to telecom journalism to cover the U.S. Congress as legislators
prepared to pass the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
“There I
was surrounded by reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times
and Wall Street Journal in a press conference with Al Gore the day Clinton
signed the Telecom Act. I have a photo from that day that I use to convince
my wife I’m a working journalist
Allison Swanson (’02)
