Diversity Diaries: Loren Ghiglione

By Loren Ghiglione
Dean, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

07.04.01

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Loren Ghiglione worked in the newsroom of The Southbridge (Mass.) Evening News for 26 years. A painting depicting the Evening News newsroom in the 1930s hangs in his office.

Recently I interviewed 13 people of color hired as interns and cub reporters in the 1980s by a dinky daily I owned for 26 years, The Southbridge (Mass.) News. Almost three-fourths are still in journalism: one a Washington correspondent for The New York Times, another Washington bureau chief for The Detroit News, still another assistant city editor of The Sun in Baltimore. While successful in journalism, many would have been labeled "risks" by a hiring editor when they joined The Southbridge News. They lacked clips and internship and student-newspaper experience. But they took risks by moving to a 17,000-population, blue-collar factory town that one intern labeled "Whiteville."

Maria Alvarez, a New York Post reporter, recalls driving to Southbridge from New York with her mother for a job interview at the News in 1985. She told her mother, "Oh my God, I can't live here. There is nothing here." But she stayed two years.

"It opened up a whole new world to me, the world of the majority," she says now. "I tell kids interested in journalism, 'Go to the small papers. Humble yourself. It's the best experience. It's what America is all about.' "

Perhaps journalism would benefit from more risk-taking by hiring editors and job candidates alike.

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