Tying It Together   

Longtime editor Edward Wasserman is named Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics at Washington and Lee University

Washington and Lee University names longtime editor and news executive Edward Wasserman to succeed Louis W. Hodges as holder of the Knight Chair in Journalism Ethics at the Lexington, Virginia, school. Hodges, 70, an ordained Methodist minister who was recently inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame, has taught for 43 years at W&L. Wasserman, 54, has more than two decades of journalism experience and an academic career that includes a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris. "This job seemed to gather together the disparate threads of my--I call it a career," Wasserman says. At the Miami Herald he rose to executive business editor; he then spent 14 years as top editor and CEO of three business and legal dailies owned by Steven Brill. In addition to journalism ethics, Wasserman is interested in teaching budding journalists about the ethics of other professions--such as law, medicine and business--while teaching pre-law, pre-med and business students about the media's influence on those professions. "It's a good time to be doing ethics," he says. "The profession is in a constant state of...ethical crisis."