Administrators announced Thursday that Loren Ghiglione, director of the University of Southern California journalism school, will become dean of the Medill School of Journalism when Ken Bode steps down this summer.
“He’s the kind of guy who shapes programs,” Provost Lawrence Dumas said. “He has a vision for what needs to be accomplished and he accomplishes it.”
Ghiglione comes to Northwestern with a background in newspaper writing and management. Before becoming journalism director at USC in 1999, he directed Emory University’s journalism program, lectured at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, served as editor of The News in Southbridge, Mass., and served as editor and publisher of The Bristol (Conn.) Press.
Ghiglione also spent a term as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and served as a judge on Pulitzer Prize juries.
He will replace Bode, who on June 22 resigned to teach and to write.
In an interview Thursday, Bode called Ghiglione a “terrific choice” and said his administrative experience and contacts in the journalism field make him a top candidate for the school. Bode said he likely will work with Ghiglione by phone until the end of this year.
“He’s very much on board,” Bode said. “He agrees with the direction we’re going with.”
Ghiglione said he wants to expand Medill’s program in business journalism, establish global reporting programs and increase the school’s emphasis on ethics. In the long term, Ghiglione said, he hopes to expand journalism classes for non-majors and better train students to work in a variety of media markets.
“I want to train students to report and write across platforms,” Ghiglione said. “Let’s not think of them as competing with one another. The issue is, how do we best prepare students to report and write across boundaries?”
He said he plans to meet with faculty before making any changes to the curriculum.
Ghiglione assumes the position of dean after a Medill student was removed from the graduate program amid accusations that he fabricated sources in 17 news articles. Ghiglione said the incident demonstrates the need to better incorporate ethics into Medill’s curriculum.
“Journalism is a moral enterprise,” he said. “I don’t have the answers, but I think we should think about ethical journalism.”
‘A GREAT IDEA MAN’
Colleagues at Emory and USC praised Ghiglione for his innovative approaches to teaching journalism.
“He’s a great idea man,” said Sheila Tefft, director of the school’s journalism program. “He’s always thinking of new approaches. He’s a very enthusiastic go-getter, and he works tremendously hard. He’d be here until all hours of the morning or the night.”
At USC, Ghiglione hired five minority professors to diversify the department’s previously all-white faculty, said journalism Prof. Terry Anzur, a member of the search committee that brought Ghiglione to USC.
“He has really made an effort to bring minorities on board,” she said. “His heart is really in the right place. It’s not just lip service with Loren.”
Scott Smith, editor in chief of the student-run Daily Trojan, said Ghiglione is known as a popular and innovative professor.
Smith, who is currently taking Ghiglione’s class on the history of journalism, said Ghiglione distributed old journalism relics including printing press parts to the class for a project. Students then had three weeks to figure out their use.
“I’ve never heard a bad word about him,” said Smith, a senior majoring in cinema-television production. “He’s very friendly and open. He has a lot of creative methods of teaching and making information readily accessible.”
Before coming to USC, Ghiglione served as chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ minorities committee and founded a task force on minorities in the newspaper business.
“He has just been wonderful in raising the profile of the school,” Anzur said. “The news hit all of us like a bombshell when we heard he was on the short list at Northwestern.”
At Emory, where he worked from 1996 to 1999, Ghiglione revitalized a faltering journalism program and established many of its core courses, Tefft said.
“He conceived the reincarnation of the journalism program,” she said. “He built this program up overnight.”
From 1990 to 1995, he served as a board member for Medill’s Newspaper Management Center, which has since been renamed the Media Management Center.
MONEY FOR MEDILL
“If it’s not one of the best, it’s the best journalism school in the country,” Ghiglione said. “I’m really looking forward to being a part of the school and raising money.”
Dumas said Ghiglione’s fund-raising experience played an important role in his selection and that administrators hope he will be able to secure more endowed faculty chairs for the school.
“It’s especially important for Medill to raise money for new endowments,” Dumas said. “(Ghiglione) shows all signs of being extremely successful at it.”
Dumas said Ghiglione raised money “in spades” at USC, heightening the profile of the journalism school and attracting top faculty.
Ghiglione said he plans to secure funds to send journalism students to media outlets worldwide. For the last three years, he has led a group of students to Cape Town, South Africa.
“All the best journalism schools are trying to move beyond U.S. boundaries,” Ghiglione said. “These are costly enterprises. One of the major jobs of the dean is to raise money. We can’t do it without that.”
