Loren Ghiglione became president of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication on Friday, and already he has plans to give diversity in all its various forms a much higher profile.

“I’m very concerned about diversity – I always have been,” said Loren Ghiglione, professor and former dean at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. “We are going to have a very active diversity committee.”

Ghiglione said he wants to pour a lot of thought on how diversity gets defined in the international context.

“We know that race and ethnicity is emphasized in the United States, and I’d like to also make sure that we consider a broader definition, to take into consideration issues such as sexual orientation, disabilities, religion, languages and others,” he said.

He also said he wants to use his year as ASJMC president to address the eroding quality of high school journalism programs, the role of the journalism school at a university, and he wants to make sure the association addresses the needs of the small journalism departments as well as the marquee programs.

As part of his mission to expand the definition of diversity, Ghiglione said he wants to push for more ASJMC meetings to be held abroad. Recently, he went to Malaysia to participate in a meeting of Asian journalists to discuss journalism education, and he said he hopes to convince ASJMC members to hold its meeting in conjunction with the first World Journalism Education Congress that will be held in 2007 in Singapore.

“I’m supporting that Congress and I are going to focus more on the international level, because the country is changing,” Ghiglione said. “[In the future] the United States is going to have a majority of people of color, and our goal is to educate our students and we need to connect more effectively about what’s going on around in the world.”

He also worried that the health of high school journalism education across the country has been undermined by budget cuts.

“A lot of high school journalism programs are in trouble, courses are being cut or eliminated and they don’t have the trained teachers in journalism that they need,” Ghiglione said. “I’d like to see what we can do to create a model for what a journalism school at the university level can do to encourage journalism education at the high school level.”

The relative health of high school programs affects the number and quality of high school student applications to journalism schools, which are facing other sorts of pressures.

“Presidents and provosts are interested in interdisciplinary education, like how the journalism school is taking advantage of the presence of its university’s law school, medical school, business school and other units,” Ghiglione said.

For 26 years, he was the editor and owner of the Southbridge Evening News and is a former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He was founding director of Emory University's journalism program and he has also served as director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism.
In 2001, he was named dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, a position he held until recently. In September, he will become Medill’s inaugural Richard Schwarzlose Professor of Media Ethics.
Ghiglione succeeds Pamela Creedon of the University of Iowa as ASJMC president.