Professor Gary E. Swanson, Conference Chair of The Asian Conference on Media & Mass Communication (MediAsia) & The Asian Conference on Film & Documentary (FilmAsia) and three time Emmy award winner, interviews Professor Richard J. Roth, Associate Dean for Journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar. They talk about Richard's background, what it's like living in the Middle East as an American, and the future of journalism.
Professor Richard J. Roth
Richard J. Roth returned in Fall 2014 to Northwestern University’s Evanston, Illinois, campus after six years at the Northwestern campus in Doha, Qatar, where he served as the school’s senior associate dean. Before going to Qatar to launch the journalism degree program there, he was senior associate dean of the Medill School of Journalism in Evanston for six years and associate dean for four years before that. Roth has been an educator since 1990, except for a brief stint as a guest editor at The Wall Street Journal in New York at the time that publication launched its online edition, then called wsjie.com, now wsj.com. Before going to The Journal, Roth was a tenured member of the English faculty at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he also served as the adviser to the award-winning student newspaper. Before academe, Roth was a newspaperman, having been editor-in- chief of the Tribune-Star in Terre Haute, Ind., and a reporter at the late, lamented Buffalo (NY) Courier-Express. He has won dozens of awards for his reporting and writing. Roth is a member of the International Advisory Board of The International Academic Forum, which sponsors the annual MediAsia conference in Japan. In the past, Roth has served on the national board of directors of the Society of Professional Journalists, was an international vice president of The Newspaper Guild, president of the Indiana Associated Press Managing Editors association, and academic adviser to the U.S. Project for Excellence in Journalism. He has taught or made major presentations about journalism in India, Japan, Kuwait, Lesoto, Norway, South Korea, Spain and, of course, Qatar and the United States.
