After spending 43 years devoted to media rights, a prominent fighter for freedom of information and longtime UF professor will retire on June 30.
Bill Chamberlin has been the UF Joseph L. Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communications since 1987 and has won many accolades for his work throughout his career.
Newspapers weren't hiring when Chamberlin graduated from the University of Washington as an aspiring journalist, so he accepted a teaching job at Central Washington State College to waive his eligibility for the Vietnam War draft.
Little did he know teaching and mentoring would become the passion of his life �" not just a means of sparing it, as he originally intended.
"All I knew was that something just felt natural," Chamberlin said.
He went on to co-author a media law textbook used by several of the nation's top journalism colleges and played a key role in the curriculum developments of UF's mass media law graduate and doctoral programs.
Despite an illustrious teaching career, Chamberlin's contributions did not stop at guiding budding journalists.
Chamberlin remained focused on fighting for media rights for the rest of his career, and he said he hopes to leave behind a legacy of encouraging journalists and the public to utilize their right to freedom of information as much as he did.
"It's critical that the public understand that we have a right to know what government is doing," he said. "The way we learn is by taking advantage of the access we have to meetings and records and by supporting journalists who are going to do the same."
Chamberlin established the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, a non-profit educational center in the College of Journalism and Communications, where journalists, attorneys and the public can go to have questions about media law answered.
He also founded the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project, which rates the open meetings and open records laws of all of the states.
He even co-founded the National Freedom of Information Coalition, a group that fosters and coordinates groups fighting for access to information in almost all 50 states.
Charles Davis, a University of Missouri professor and executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, was one of Chamberlin's former students at UF.
"One of the wonderful things about academia is the ability to carry on beyond yourself through helping others," Davis said. "Bill has quite a genealogy of people out there, like myself, for whom he has erected successful academic careers."
Davis said despite Chamberlin's contributions to the fight for freedom of information, Chamberlin would probably say his greatest achievement was the progress of his students.
Davis' prediction was right.
Chamberlin said more than anything he feels most proud of the relationships he has developed with his students, some of who have gone on to teach at the best universities in the country.
Kim Walsh-Childers, now a UF journalism professor, was one of his students when he taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"It's easy for faculty to get jaded and become frustrated with students," Walsh-Childers said, "but Bill has never taken that attitude."
When one student lost her family's home to a hurricane, Walsh-Childers said Chamberlin worked around the clock to gather donations and supplies to help the student get back on her feet.
Chamberlin and his wife, Jeanne, hosted Thanksgiving dinner at their home several years in a row for international students unable to make it home for the holidays, she added. And when Walsh-Childers saw Chamberlin and his wife sitting in the back of the room at her son's fifth grade graduation last week, she said she was not at all surprised.
"He is one of the most loyal people I have ever known," Walsh-Childers said. "I don't know who is going to fill his role."
