Dabney Professorship – 2000
Dorothy Gilliam, a reporter, editor and columnist, as well as director of the Young Journalists Development Program at The Washington Post, taught an intensive course on feature writing as the Dabney Professor for 2000. Her class explored how society is divided by race, class, gender, geography and generation and discussed how understanding these “fault lines” is crucial to recognizing and writing fair and balanced journalism.
Gilliam joined The Washington Post in 1961 as a general assignment reporter after serving as an editor of Jet magazine for two years. She left the newspaper in the mid-1960s to spend more time with her children, and worked part time as a television reporter and freelance writer.
Gilliam returned to The Washington Post in 1972 as assistant editor of the Style section. In 1979, she began writing a Metro column covering education, politics and race as well as her personal experiences. Since 1997, she has directed the Young Journalists Development Program, which encourages high school and college students to pursue careers in journalism.
Gilliam has received numerous honors, including the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism Alumni of the Year Award, the University of Missouri Honor Medal in Journalism and the Journalist of the Year award from the Capital Press Club.
She is a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists and a member of the group’s Hall of Fame. Gilliam also has chaired the board of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in California. It was Maynard, the late publisher of the Oakland ( Calif.) Tribune, who originated the “fault lines” concept that Gilliam taught in her course at VCU.