Tom Rose, managing editor of the Palm Beach Post, fell in love with journalism, as we all usually do, when he was a golf major in college.

His enthusiasm for the craft was apparent when he visited our journalism department Monday morning to lecture on how newspapers can continue to compete even as print is dying (supposedly). If you ask Dr. Husni, that's not an accurate perception.

Rose compared journalism to "The art of the tease".

"Think of feature stories as strip teases," he said. "Hard news stories are different, though.

You gotta give it all up at the front."

I was especially interested when he answered my question regarding the role of creative non-fiction in newspapers.

"Fiction writers know how to grab your attention," he said. "It's the same with creative non-fiction. I think it has a place in newspapers as long as it's real."

He had lots of good advice for young journalists:

"Use s and sh sounds to speed up your sentences. T and th sounds slow the reader down."

"Read good writers. Learn how the sentences click and purr when juxtaposed together. Throw off the shackles and write. Trying is how you learn."

Sometimes you get so caught up in just churning out stories that you lose sight, if only momentarily, of the power of words and the thrill of certain stories.

Rose's account of covering the Bear Bryant funeral in Tuscaloosa reminded me of the thrill of just finding the story sometimes.

When he first began recounting the day he arrived in Tuscaloosa, after having car trouble and hitchhiking to campus in a chicken farmer's truck loaded top to bottom with squawking poultry, I thought that would be the story he was looking for. He told about how that brusque, hardened man dissolved in tears at the mention of the legendary coach.

"He was the only damn thing we had to be proud of," the man repeated over and over.

But that wasn't his story. It wasn't until after the funeral, on the way from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham that he found his story. People were lined up on the freeway overpasses all the way there, just hoping for a glimpse of the funeral procession. Truckers were pulled off the road, holding their hats over their hearts in respect or cb'ing ahead to other truckers to report the processions' location.

That was his story he had to write.

"If you can write and you can report, there will always be a job in journalism for you," he encouraged us before he left.

I believe him.