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 are a paid internship, a professional development program and a discretionary award, which will be used to recognize a News Division employee with outstanding contributions.
Along with this new plan, CBS News is establishing the Harold Dow Professorship has been established at the Florida A &M University 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.
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.”