Dwight Bentel

Dwight Essler Bentel (April 15, 1909 Walla Walla, Washington - May 16, 2012 Saratoga, California) was an American journalist and professor. He has been called "the father of journalism" at San Jose State University. In 1934, he founded the Spartan Daily, the campus newspaper. In 1936, he founded the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, which has produced six Pulitzer Prize winners and thousands of journalists, and is one of the largest programs of its kind in the nation. The school renamed the building that houses the school "Dwight Bentel Hall" in 1982. Subsequently, the on campus advertising agency has been named Dwight, Bentel and Hall Communications.

"You were just determined to be as good as you could because you knew that was what Dwight expected of you,"|Professor Emeritus Gordon Greb| after earning his doctoral degree and continued to teach there until his retirement in 1974. The program grew to one of the largest in the country, including specialties in advertising, public relations, photojournalism and radio and television broadcasting. The department was one of the first to require internships for graduation.

Bentel was a staunch defender of the First Amendment, reminding students from the first day: Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of the press.

Congress was making no law when the executive branch imposed bureaucratic secrecy, he would explain, or when the judicial branch issued contempt citations to reporters protecting confidential news sources. The only guarantees, he would add, were the public's insistence that no one intrude on its right to know and the determination by the news media to fight for that right.

Truth is an absolute defense! plus wrote Stories of Santa Clara Valley, co-authored by Freitas Spurgeon and jointly authored The Encyclopedia of Photography; the Complete Photographer; the Comprehensive Guide and Reference for All Photographers. Bentel also had a lifelong passion for Death Valley, and spent many hours visiting, studying and researching the Valley and the people who inhabited it.