Profiles in Success  Submit a Profile In-depth looks at life after J-School. Class Notes  Submit a Class Note Shorter updates and recent alumni photos. Sort by Decade Sort by Name/Emphasis Show All 2000-Present 1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 Show All: List by Last Name Graduate Degree Magazine Newspaper Photojournalism Radio-Television Strategic Communication Sort by Decade More Alumni Resources 2000-Present 1990-1999 1980-1989 1970-1979 1960-1969 1950-1959 1940-1949 1930-1939 1920-1929 @mizzou For All We Call Mizzou Mizzou Alumni Association MizzouNet

Michael Gross, BJ '69

Tell us about your career.
I went to law school at the University of Michigan after J-School, clerked for an appellate judge for a year and then was a trial lawyer for 12 years. I left my trial firm in 1975 to start an appellate practice--so I could write for a living after all.

What is the best professional lesson you learned at the J-School?
Tell the story well. Be succinct, but recognize the necessary details. The necessity of some details may not be apparent at first.

What advice do you have for current students?
Write and read. Read and write.

What is your favorite J-School memory?
Mr. Duffy's (Prof. Thomas Duffy) lessons. I had written a weeklong series about the Boone County prosecutor's unannounced sojourn as acting chief counsel of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Congressman Dick Ichord was inheriting the chairmanship of HUAC, and the prosecutor from Columbia had been invited to spend the week questioning members of the Chicago Seven* in Washington. He arrived back in Columbia on a bus Friday night. Television cameras and big-city reporters were all over the bus station, and I couldn't get near the prosecutor. But he and I were the last people to leave, and he accepted my offer of a ride home. I went back to the newsroom and wrote a straightforward story about the interview. Mr. Duffy read it, looked at me kind of sadly, and dashed off the lead that I used for all of my job interviews that fall: "As I was driving Frank Conley home from the Greyhound bus station Friday night, finally able to talk with him face-to-face about the week he had spent cross-examining members of the Chicago Seven in Washington, D.C. ..."

*The Chicago Seven were the highly-publicized defendants of multiple charges related to
protests that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Ill.