Former LA Times Editor To Lecture at KSG

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced last week that it had selected John S. Carroll as the first Knight Visiting Lecturer, a position that will focus on journalism and public policy and will be based at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

The Knight Foundation, which advocates journalism and community service, founded the lectureship in a joint project with the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy to attract nationally recognized, practicing journalists. Those selected as Knight lecturers receive a $200,000 grant, which they can use to research at the university of their choice.

Carroll had already planned to do research at Harvard under a fellowship awarded to him by the Shorenstein Center, but said the KSG is also an ideal atmosphere for the research he is interested in conducting for the lectureship.

“I think there are a lot of people around Harvard who I can learn from,” Carroll said. “I’m interested in journalism and public policy and there are a lot of smart people here who can illuminate that for me.”

Carroll is the former vice-president and editor of the Los Angeles Times, which won 13 Pulitzer Prizes during his time there.

Under the Shorenstein fellowship, Carroll would have had only one semester to focus on research. According to the Director of the Shorenstein Center Alex S. Jones, for Carroll to also teach, the KSG had to first approve him as a visiting member of the faculty.

Michael A. Maidenberg—vice-president and chief program officer at the Knight Foundation—said Carroll’s national prominence and strong reputation as a journalist was the reason he was selected for the chair.

“He’s really one of America’s top newsmen,” Maidenberg said. “When he speaks he will have credibility.”

Carroll also has been known to question the veracity of modern journalists, and in a speech given at the University of Oregon last year, he criticized Fox News for misleading viewers about the Iraq War. He called Fox talk-show hosts such as Bill O’Reilly a “different breed of journalists” who practice “pseudo-journalism.” Carroll said that he will probably discuss that issue in his lectures, although he has yet to begin any official planning.

Next semester, Carroll will focus his research on the changing world of journalism and the risks and opportunities that go with it. In the fall, he will teach a for-credit course on his findings.

The Knight Foundation generally funds fully endowed chairs that require visiting academics or lecturers to make a substantial time commitment to a university. According to Maidenberg, the foundation decided to create a visiting chair because it would change universities year-to-year and cater to the needs of working journalists.

“The chair was created with someone like John [Carroll] in mind,” Maidenberg said. “Someone like Carroll, who came off the editorship of the Los Angeles Times may not want to become a chair and commit himself to teaching and research, but as a lecturer at Harvard, he has a superb platform to begin explaining his ideas about what is happening in journalism and to uphold values that he believes in and that we support.”

—Staff writer Alexander C. Shell can be reached at acshell@fas.harvard.edu.