This fall, Washington and Lee welcomed Eric Deggans as the new Knight Chair in Journalism and Media Ethics.
Deggans is one of 23 active Knight Chairs, out of 26 endowed positions nationwide, according to the Knight Foundation website. The Knight Foundation funds local journalism and community programs to create informed citizens.
The Knight Chair professorship is intended to teach students what it means to be journalists, according to the foundation’s website. The Knight Foundation’s endowment pays for Deggans’ salary and events he manages at the university.
Deggans is provided with a level of autonomy in what he gets to teach.
Currently, he teaches JOUR 268: Framing of Race and Ethnicity in Mass Media and JOUR 344: Ethics of Journalism. Next semester, he will teach JOUR 345: Media Ethics and JOUR 395B: Topics: Art and Craft of Entertainment Journalism.
In addition to teaching, Deggans organizes the journalism department’s ethics institutes, in which his ethics students learn from professional journalists and communicators. Guest speakers discuss difficult ethical decisions that they faced in their job.
Deggans has over 35 years of experience in the journalism industry. Before joining the university’s faculty, he served as a television critic and guest host for National Public Radio. He continues to work part-time for NPR as a critic-at-large, a role that allows him to write critiques about a variety of subjects.
Deggans said he hopes he will be able to use his connections to have his students join Zoom calls with CNN Correspondent Brian Stelter and Roy Wood Jr., an actor and comedian who worked on The Daily Show.
Having spent so much time in the field, Deggans has stories of his own to share with students. In an interview with the Phi, Deggans described a time when he exposed a man who had lied about being a Grammy-nominated musician.
Deggans said the man couldn’t sing. “He would play tracks, and he would kind of warble.” But despite his lack of musical talent, the man had convinced a city councilman to give him the key to the city.
In response, Deggans wrote a front-page story laying out the entirety of the scheme, even going as far as to search the con man’s driver’s license information. Deggans went to his home to “freak him out, as he had no idea that he could be found.”
Despite the short amount of time he’s spent at the university so far, Deggans said he loves the community and students at Washington and Lee. He described the students as “super bright” and said he can already call some of his colleagues his friends.
Not only is Deggans teaching, but he said he is also learning.
“If you’re doing it right, every time you teach a course, you learn something from your students,” Deggans said.
