History
Loyola University New Orleans has a long history of instructing its students in the mass communication disciplines.
Between 1915 and 1920, the university taught students courses in wireless communications, the field that later became radio. On March 31, 1922, WWL radio broadcast from a physics lab in the university’s Marquette Hall. The transmission was the first such AM radio broadcast in the Gulf South. On November 1, 1923, the first edition of Loyola’s student newspaper, The Maroon, was published. The newspaper remains in print today.
Loyola broadened its mass communication curriculum in 1931, when the university began offering courses in journalism and advertising. Two journalism courses were taught in the English department, and an advertising course was taught in the Department of Commerce and Finance, which later became the College of Business.
By 1937, there were nine journalism course offerings and the English department was renamed the Department of English and Journalism. Between 1937 and 1951, the university renamed the department several times, switching periodically between hosting a stand-alone journalism department and grouping journalism courses in the English and speech departments.
In 1952, a separate Department of Journalism was formally established under the direction of the Rev. John A. Toomey, S.J. The department offered courses in news writing and reporting, news editing, advanced editing, feature writing, sports writing, editorial writing, photography and history of journalism. Public relations and advertising courses were added in 1961.
In 1953, Loyola’s WWL radio station acted as a separate department at the university, offering courses in radio announcing, radio script writing, radio acting and directing and radio programming. The courses were taught in cooperation with the speech and English departments. As Loyola developed its mass communication course offerings, television and radio formed a separate Department of Communications in 1960. Allen Jacobs, a senior producer-director with WWL-TV, was the first Department of Communications chairman. The Department of Communications offered courses in TV performance, TV production, broadcast sales and advertising, broadcast news, educational TV, film production and radio.
The Department of Communications and the Department of Journalism merged in 1977 into the Department of Communications/Journalism. In 1978, the name of the new combined department was simply the Department of Communications, offering students degrees in journalism, radio, television and film. In 1981, the faculty created formal sequences of study in journalism, public relations, advertising, broadcast journalism, broadcast production and communications studies. A sequence in photojournalism was added in 1988.
The Department of Communications was housed in various locations during its existence. Most of its broadcasting curriculum was taught in the basement of the Danna Center, Loyola’s student union. In the early 1980s, under the direction of then President the Rev. James C. Carter, S.J., the university built a new home for the department.
The $13-million Communications/Music Complex, where the School of Mass Communication is housed today, was built in 1982. The building was erected on the site of three Victorian-style houses that stood on St. Charles Avenue at the corner of Calhoun Street. The private residences, which were torn down to make way for the new complex, were converted to university use years before and named MacDonald Hall, Cummings Hall and the Elizabeth Seton Building.Loyola had close ties to CBS and its talent because of its ownership of WWL-TV and WWL Radio, both CBS affiliates. In February of 1983, a public groundbreaking event was held for the Communications/Music Complex. Veteran CBS Newsman Walter Cronkite was guest speaker at the ceremony and was awarded an honorary degree by the university.
The College of Music and the Department of Communications moved into their new building during the summer of 1984. On March 6, 1986, the Communications/Music Complex was dedicated with a black-tie gala. Charles Kuralt, a CBS journalist and author, served as the program master of ceremonies.
In 1989, Loyola University New Orleans sold its interest in radio stations WWL-AM and WLMG-FM for $12.85 million. A year later, in 1990, the university sold WWL-TV for $102 million. The sales were part of the university’s long-term goal of diversifying its endowment.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in United States history, hit the Gulf Coast and forced the university to cease instruction for a semester. When the community returned to New Orleans in January 2006, several areas of the university underwent reorganization. The Department of Communications was renamed the School of Mass Communication and moved from the College of Arts and Sciences to a new College of Social Sciences. Also, in response to technological changes in the mass communication disciplines, the broadcast journalism program was merged into a single journalism sequence in which students are taught all aspects of reporting, photography and digital media. The School of Mass Communication’s curriculum today consists of advertising, journalism and public relations.