Newspaperman Led U-Md. Journalism Dept.

Reese Cleghorn, 78, a prominent journalist in Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C., who became dean of the University of Maryland's journalism department and helped increase the national prominence of the school during his 19-year tenure, died March 16 at his home in Washington. He had heart disease.

Mr. Cleghorn, one of the longest-sitting deans at U-Md., led the journalism department from 1981 to 2000.

"He was able to effect change at a much more rapid pace because of the newsroom culture he brought," said Christopher Callahan, dean of Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. "By academic standards, the changes he put into place were at light speed."

Mr. Cleghorn was the brainchild behind the school's successful student-operated wire service, Capital News Service, which launched in 1990 with bureaus in Washington and Annapolis. The news service stories appear in Maryland newspapers and on the McClatchy news service, which has national distribution.

He helped create the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, which focuses on training and educating professional journalists. He recruited journalists including David Broder of The Washington Post and Gene Roberts of the New York Times as professors, persuaded the National Association of Black Journalists to relocate its headquarters to the school's College Park campus and became the publisher of the monthly magazine American Journalism Review, which the school had owned since the late 1980s.

In 1998, he was instrumental in pushing for the unpopular removal of the public relations component from the journalism program in order to create what he said would be "more of a journalism with a capital 'J' program."

"A journalist's mission is to tell the truth," he told the New York Times. "It's not to sell something, it's not to sell people on something -- it's to find out and disseminate the truth in a responsible manner."

George Reese Cleghorn, who was born April 9, 1930, in Lyerly, Ga., and raised in Summerville, Ga., received a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1950 from Emory University in Atlanta, where he was editor of the student newspaper. He received a master's degree in public law and government from Columbia University in 1956.

During the 1960s, first as city editor and later as an editorial writer for the Atlanta Journal, Mr. Cleghorn built a reputation as an early advocate for civil rights along with other progressive Atlanta journalists Fred Powledge and Walter Rugaber.

"He was a very persuasive voice on the subject and took a special interest in advocating for racial change," said Roberts, who covered the civil rights movement for the Times. "He thought Atlanta at the time was the leading Southern city and should take the lead in desegregation."

In 1967, Mr. Cleghorn co-wrote "Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics" with Pat Watters.

Mr. Cleghorn led the Charlotte Observer's editorial department during the 1970s, when the city was facing school desegregation and urban growth and the country was embroiled in the Vietnam War.

In a 1974 column, he called for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal, a bold commentary given Nixon's 1972 election victory in North Carolina.

Nixon's mere resignation from office was not enough, he wrote, adding, "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."

Mr. Cleghorn was the deputy editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press before accepting the job at U-Md. In 1995, he was named Journalism Administrator of the Year by the Freedom Forum, a foundation advocating a free press. He retired in December as a U-Md. professor emeritus.

His marriage to Gwendolyn Michael Cleghorn ended in divorce.

Survivors include his wife of 34 years, Cheree Briggs Cleghorn of Washington; two children from his first marriage, the Rev. John Cleghorn of Charlotte and Nona Cleghorn of Atlanta; and four grandchildren.