Jon Petrovich, the Medill School of Journalism’s new broadcast chairman and professor, once ran a story even though it lost his station $1 million dollars in advertising. He ran another that exposed corruption and led to a police shooting.

He’s traveled the world from Latin America to Southeast Asia. Now, he’s wound up in Evanston, joining the academic world at the Medill School of Journalism after a 37-year career in both the business and editorial sides of broadcast journalism.

As the latest addition to the broadcast faculty, Petrovich hopes his experiences – from his first internship in Louisville, Kentucky to his post as an executive vice president of CNN for 15 years – will inspire students.

“We as a profession have been soiled in terms of credibility, but we can always pick up and look at our mistakes and police ourselves – with all the new technology,” Petrovich said of his decision to go into journalism education. “We don’t have a lot of time to make journalistic decisions and we need young, bright, committed people to head us in the right direction.”

The start of Petrovich’s post at Medill comes after the retirement of Joe Angotti, former chairman of the broadcast department. Angotti oversaw the establishment of regular news broadcasts at the Northwestern News Network and could often be found at the news studios in the McCormick Tribune Center.

Petrovich said he is prepared to take on the challenge of replacing the longtime professor.

“I would like to emulate (Angotti’s) involvement with students,” Petrovich said.

Though academia is a “new candy store” to Petrovich, he served on Medill’s board of advisors for eight years and made sure the school was a staple on CNN’s recruiting calendar.

“I was always quoted as saying ‘I’d like to be in academia;’ it’s the icing on the cake of my career,” he said.

Petrovich comes to Medill with many ideas for preparing future journalists for an era he considers “at a crossroads.” He said he hopes to increase exposure for the Northwestern News Network and to get more Communications students involved.

He also said that NU has been asked to anchor and produce a national collegiate news program through the Open Student Television Network, a network of television programming already available on 35 college campuses looking to start a news program. NU’s involvement in the program is in the primary discussion stages, Petrovich said.

Although he hopes to increase the opportunities available to students, Petrovich said he wants students to know that to succeed in journalism, they must start small and work their way up, as his career path demonstrates.

This bottom-up approach is part of what attracted the Medill committee that hired him.

“He’s really been involved with a lot of start-up operations, in starting from scratch and creating something that wasn’t already there; that really stood out for me,” said Medill Prof. Ava Greenwell, a professor in the broadcast journalism department and a member of the hiring committee.

Greenwell added that Petrovich’s international experience as the head of CNN en Espa