Reese Cleghorn

Reese Cleghorn, who led The Observer's editorial department during the turbulent changes of the early 1970s and later built a nationally prominent journalism department at the University of Maryland, died early Monday.

Family members confirmed the death to the University of Maryland, where Cleghorn was a teacher in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism.

Cleghorn was 78.

Funeral details and other information are forthcoming, University of Maryland officials say.

Cleghorn was editorial page editor at The Observer from 1971 to 1976. That era included the rise of the late Jesse Helms, longtime powerful Republican U.S. Senator from North Carolina; major changes in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, which were integrated shortly before he arrived in Charlotte; and the beginnings of Charlotte's growth, which vaulted the city into one of the South's major metropolitan areas.

Cleghorn's son, John, was is a former writer at The Observer and now is pastor at Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian Church in the Elizabeth community.

"Reese was a man of high standards, gentle wit, graceful prose and fierce principle," Ed Williams, who retired as The Observer's editorial page editor last year, wrote in a 1996 column.

During his time in Charlotte, Cleghorn hired Williams and the late Doug Marlette, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his editorial cartoons.

Reese Cleghorn saw Charlotte of the early 1970s as being at a crossroads.

In a 1986 column written for The Observer, Cleghorn wrote, "The South, for the first time in this century, was looking at itself, 'warts and all.' That was in sharp contrast with the ostrich-like posture of earlier decades, which had been nurtured by Southern defensiveness and the industrial boosterism that The Charlotte Observer itself had helped foster."

He often took a forceful position -- for example, in a 1974 editorial calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon, who had carried North Carolina easily in the 1972 election.

Saying impeachment, not resignation, was necessary, Cleghorn wrote, "An ousted president who still proclaimed his innocence would be free to rally his last-ditch supporters by insisting he was hounded out of office by the liberal press and left wing elements in Congress and the judiciary."

A Georgia native, Cleghorn earned a bachelors degree from Emory University in Atlanta and a masters from Columbia University in New York City. He worked in the Atlanta area before arriving in Charlotte. After his Observer stint, he moved to the Detroit Free-Press, then switched to academia in 1981, when he became dean of the College of Journalism.

He remained in that position until retiring as an administrator in 2000 -- the longest tenure ever for an administrator at the University of Maryland. He stayed at the school afterwards, teaching a number of courses in commentary and editorial writing.

In the Gannett Center for Media Studies' 1988 assessment of journalism education, Maryland's journalism school was included among the "Eleven Exemplary Journalism Schools." He was instrumental in bringing the national monthly magazine American Journalism Review to the college in 1987.

Other notable achievements during Cleghorn's tenure included the National Association of Black Journalists moving its headquarters to the campus; the start of a student-operated wire service, Capital News Service, in 1990; and a number of fund raising drives that created special chairs in the journalism school.

Cleghorn was named Journalism Administrator of the Year by the Freedom Forum in 1995.

Al Neuharth, chairman of the forum said that "at a time when journalism schools have teetered on the verge of extinction at many leading universities, Maryland has not only survived but thrived under Dean Cleghorn's leadership."

Cleghorn and Pat Watters co-wrote "Climbing Jacob's Ladder," a book about the civil rights movement in the South.