BU J-School Snags NY Times Media Columnist David Carr for Newly Endowed Professorship

Image by NYTimes via CrunchBase

The Boston Globe reported today that The New York Times' prominent media columnist David Carr will join Boston University's College of Communication ("COM") in January as a professor in a newly endowed chair devoted to exploring business models to sustain journalism in a digital age.

Carr will continue to write his Times column, but will teach one course a semester at COM where he will spend two days a week, according to the Globe article. Carr will be a non-tenured professor of the practice on a contract with COM. Tom Menino, Boston's Mayor the past two decades, also will be joining BU's faculty next year in a similar arrangement.

The new professorship was endowed by a $1.66 million gift from BU alum, trustee and Bloomberg Media Group CEO Andrew Lack, with BU trustee Alan Leventhal kicking in more than $830,000.  Among other courses, Carr will teach media criticism.

It will be intriguing to see how the outspoken Carr adjusts to academia, given that he wrote in a March 31, 2013 column: "Having seen many journalism programs up close, I can say that most are escalators to nowhere."

The hard-working staff of "TUOL" just completed his 16th year of teaching Media Law at COM.