Geneva Overholser to head USC J school
I hear that Geneva Overholser, the esteemed (and honestly well-liked and even revered) former editor of the Des Moines Register will be announced Monday as the new head of the Journalism School at the Annenberg School for Communication at USC.
She now holds the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting for the Missouri School of Journalism in Washington, D.C., and is a print, broadcast and online media critic. She's no stranger to the USC campus, as she spoke in February on the future of journalism and journalism education there.
She'll replace Michael Parks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pasadenan who is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times. Parks -- equally esteemed, equally well-liked -- will continue to be a professor at the school.
It's the best possible news for a school trying to stay on its arc of growing prestige at a time that finds journalism programs in almost as perilous a state as traditional journalism.