CBS News is establishing the Harold Dow Professorship at Florida A &M’s School of Journalism and Graphic Communication. The professorship is designed to enhance presentation skills for students that are interested in on-air positions in broadcast television and will begin in the 2011-2012 academic year.
Along with this new plan, according to an official press release, CBS News is implementing an array of initiatives, some starting as early as 2011, to promote diversity and excellence in journalism. A few of
these new programs include a paid internship, a professional development program and a discretionary award, which will be used to recognize a News Division employee with outstanding contributions.
Dow had been a correspondent for the CBS TV investigative news series 48 Hours since 1990, after having served as a contributor to the broadcast since its premiere on January 1988. He had been a contributing correspondent for 48 Hours on Crack Street, the critically acclaimed 1986 documentary that led to the single-topic weekly news magazine. Dow conducted the first network interview for 48 Hours with O. J. Simpson following the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
Prior to his work with 48 Hours, Dow was a correspondent for the CBS News magazine Street Stories (1992-93), and had reported for the CBS Evening News and CBS News Sunday Morning since the early 1970s.
Dow died from complications of asthma on August 21, 2010 at a New Jersey hospital.
“Harold was a celebrated journalist, a CBS colleague and a friend and mentor to me and to so many throughout his career,” said CBS News senior producer Kim Godwin, a FAMU SJGC alumna.
“I am proud of CBS’s ongoing focus on excellence and diversity in our newsroom and in the industry as a whole, and so very gratified that the students at FAMU will benefit from this wonderful professorship established in celebration of Harold’s extraordinary contributions and career,” said Godwin.