The Graduate School of Journalism mourns the passing on August 11 of David Klatell, a broadcast journalist and a professor and leader at the school for 26 years.
“He was a great teacher, leader, and innovator in journalism education who made deep contributions to the school across many years,” said Dean Steve Coll. “He was vice dean and academic dean until 2008, among other roles, and he has built and managed our excellent partnerships with journalism graduate schools in France, Spain and elsewhere. He was robust, lively, funny and active right up until very recently, which makes his departure all the more shocking.”
Professor Klatell was recruited to the Journalism School in 1993 and was tasked with redesigning the School’s broadcast curriculum, among other responsibilities. His years at the school saw great upheaval in the news industry, and he was at the forefront of training new journalists at the school and at institutes around the world in the changing ways of delivering information.
He ran the broadcast journalism program for many years and taught broadcast news reporting, digital reporting, new business models (especially focused on start-ups and mobile video platforms) in journalism, and ethics. His teaching in recent years has been on the disruption of the television news industry and on converging media and the business models needed to sustain them.
Most recently, he devised and taught a popular, oversubscribed class, “Reinventing TV News,” where students worked with CNN, NowThis and other broadcast and video enterprises on rethinking news formats, delivery systems and business models. In these classes, students were given confidential access (link is external) to news managers and producers as well as internal financial and other documents.
As chair of International Programs, Professor Klatell coordinated the Graduate School of Journalism’s growing list of international affiliations and collaborations, including Paris, Barcelona, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Santiago.
In 2002, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger named Klatell Acting Dean of the Journalism School, as the search for a new dean began.
“David was for many years one of the Journalism School’s essential leaders, serving as a trusted administrator, admired teacher and inspiring mentor,” Bollinger said. “I turned to him, upon becoming Columbia’s president, to lead the Journalism School as interim dean while we continued the search for a new dean and a process for thinking about the future of journalism and journalism schools, and ours in particular. David handled that responsibility, as he did everything he devoted himself to, with extraordinary dedication, unerring judgment and good humor. He will be long remembered and deeply missed.”
When Nicholas Lemann was named dean in 2004, Professor Klatell served as Vice Dean, a position he held until 2008.
“For a quarter century, David Klatell was the soul of Columbia Journalism School,” said Lemann. “He was rare, maybe one of a kind, in being equally excellent at teaching and administration, equally interested in his home journalistic medium of broadcasting and broader concerns, and equally loyal to this institution and to the cause of better journalism education worldwide. He left us many gifts, and we will carry on his work.”
Professor Klatell was a recognized international expert on the development and management of journalism education and training programs. He has advised schools and professional organizations in more than 20 countries, including:
- Helping set up the Jordan Media Institute (link is external) with Her Royal Highness Princess Rym Ali, who is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and a former Baghdad correspondent for CNN. The Institute, established in 2010, offers a master’s degree in Journalism and New Media. It is known as a centre of excellence for journalism training in the Middle East; its programs strive to combine international journalism standards with the distinctiveness of Arab culture.
- Helping establish (link is external) a media and liberal arts school that will be part of Bennett University, a new university established by the Times of India Group. Bennett University opened this summer in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
- Helping build a curriculum for a new master’s degree (link is external)in multimedia journalism at Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications in Nairobi.
- Providing support for the establishment of a graduate program in journalism to the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM) in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
- In 1999, he was course director of a new class on advanced modern journalism (link is external) taught at the Central European University in Budapest. The course was in many ways revolutionary for the region, defining “modern” in post-Communist terms to mean nonideological – honest, factual, reliable, ethical – in a word professional.
Prior to joining Columbia, Professor Klatell was Program director, department chair and Director of the School of Journalism at Boston University. He served there from 1974 to 1993.
After graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree in Film and Asian Studies, Professor Klatell became a broadcast journalist. He won awards as an editor and producer of news and public affairs programs for WCBV-TV in Boston and as an independent documentary producer. He is the co-author of two books about the business relationships between television and sports, and his articles about television have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major newspapers and magazines. He served for many years as chairman of the jury for the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards in broadcast journalism.
As a professional consultant, he advised the development of television news organizations in Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and China. He also served as director of international station development for New York Times Television and Video News International. In addition, he was a consultant to broadcast media in the U.S. East Coast, including WNET.org, WLIW TV and NJTV.
Professor Klatell died in New York City just days after being diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. He was a beloved professor and mentor to many Journalism School alumni and faculty. As Professor LynNell Hancock said: “The outpouring of tributes are flooding my email and my phone from students and colleagues. It’s overwhelming, and they all say similar things: David brought me here to the school, he mentored me, he was my trusted advisor on all things, a wise, crabby, authentic, extremely kind teacher and a loyal friend.”
Professor Klatell is survived by his wife, Nancy Lauter, two daughters, Jenna and Devon, and three grandchildren. The family wishes that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to a memorial scholarship fund. Details of this, as well as of a memorial service at the Columbia Journalism School, will be announced soon.