Joe Angotti, the longtime chairman of the broadcast department in the Medill School of Journalism, announced his retirement this spring.

“He certainly has been a terrific leader,” said Medill Dean Loren Ghighlione. “Certainly the students expressed themselves at graduation. He got a standing ovation.”

Since he began in 1999, Angotti has overseen the building of a state-of-the-art news studio in the McCormick Tribune Center and the establishment of regular news broadcasts at Northwestern News Network. But what he’s most proud of is a program most Northwestern students have never heard of, one that unites Medill broadcast students with students at the City Colleges of Chicago.

“(The city colleges students) are inner-city students who would never have had the opportunity to attend any kind of class at Northwestern,” Angotti said. “This program gave them that opportunity.”

The Friday night newscasts created for Chicago’s Channel 20 with students from both institutions expanded NNN’s audience to a potential 3 million viewers, Angotti said.

“It’s just not a typical academic research program and I think that’s why it hasn’t received the kind of attention I think it deserves in the Northwestern community,” Angotti said.

Angotti has begun life after NU in a quiet way, beginning a hippotherapy program on his horse farm in western Illinois. He says he’ll be teaching a course at Monmouth College in the fall.

“I think I’d probably feel a terrific loss if I wasn’t able to be around students and teach,” Angotti said.

Angotti and his successor, Jon Petrovich, have taken similar paths to the top in broadcast. They are from the same town in northern Indiana, went to the same universities and even started out at the same TV station in Louisville, Ky.

“I think he’ll be very innovative,” Angotti said. “One of the areas he’ll probably want to focus on that I didn’t necessarily is international broadcasting. And take the program to the next step.”

Petrovich has an extensive background in international media, having worked as the head of CNN Latin America and as a consultant to CCTV in China.

“My goal is to continue the Medill tradition with broadcast taking the knowledge and years of experience and applying it,” said Petrovich, who will take over the position in September for a minimum of five years.

Petrovich said he would like to spearhead a symposium to address emerging media in China in light of the upcoming 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Reach Elizabeth Kirk at [email protected].