Oren Campbell spent nearly four decades in journalism before deciding — at a time when many people might consider retirement — to advise college students on their own daily newspaper.

The reason: "The students," Campbell says. "They're great to work with. My goal was to try to make sure that the students here not only had fun while they were learning but found out all about the outside world and what was going on with journalism."

Fourteen years later, Campbell is retiring as editorial adviser and publisher of The Daily, the 16,000-circulation newspaper of the University of Washington.

Campbell will retire in August and hopes to spend his time attending jazz festivals and traveling. He plans to get involved with Partners of the Americas, a volunteer organization that promotes cultural and economic exchange between the U.S. and Latin America and the Caribbean, and get involved in the Washington News Council, a nonprofit media watchdog.

The Seattle Times sat down with Campbell as the UW's year drew to a close. Here are excerpts of the conversation:

Q: What was your role as a publisher and editorial adviser?

A: As a publisher I'm in charge of the business operation of the newspaper, and I worked hands- on with the students in the advertising area, and as editorial adviser I have a hands-off role with the newsroom and I'll critique the paper every day. I don't get involved in any of the decision-making that is done by the editors.

Q: How has the state of journalism changed over your career?

A: A disturbing change is the decreasing number of newspapers that exist in this country and the large reduction in the number of newspaper jobs. It's very disturbing to me that students have to accept entry-level jobs now that pay essentially what they paid eight to 10 years ago while the cost of living has accelerated.

Q: Reflecting on your past experiences, what are your predictions for the future of journalism?

A: I have no idea. I can speculate ... I foresee that there will be increasingly fewer jobs available and that the quality of national publications like The New York Times will continue to thrive, and there will be paper closures due to declining circulation at the conventional newspapers.

Q: So are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the future of journalism?

A: I guess I would have to say it's a mixed emotion. I'm pessimistic about the future of journalism for anybody who is not highly motivated. For the highly motivated people there will always be a place for them, I think, in the next 15, 20 or 25 years in journalism in some form. It may be in a form that we don't know now, it may be in online journalism, but the journalism of today may well not be the journalism of 10 or 25 years from now.

Q: Journalism scandals, such as those involving CBS anchor Dan Rather, Jayson Blair at The New York Times, and Newsweek's reporting on the prison guards at Guantánamo Bay, have eroded the public's trust in journalism. How do you think the media can regain that trust?

A: Well, I think the first step in regaining some of the public trust would be to recognize that our nation's government is trying to erode the public trust in the news media. As long as the administration approaches the news media as it has, it's going be a challenge to gain back the public trust, because when the news media says that something didn't happen the way government said it did, the government is going to go out of its way to make the news media look bad and itself look good.

Q: How do you think the journalism industry can improve its image?

A: I think that each individual newsroom needs to have discussions with its staff members on a regular basis about proper ethics, about how to handle sources — the care and treatment of your news sources. They [staff members] need to understand that you don't copy somebody else's work as your own without attributing that work to the individual who was responsible for it, and I think that this may be something that some of our publications are not doing often enough or emphatically enough.

Seung Hwa Hong: 206-464-3347 or ihong@seattletimes.com