Richard J. Roth is now located in Doha, Qatar, where he is the journalism dean at Northwestern University's first international campus. Before accepting this assignment, which began in July 2008, Roth was for 10 years the senior associate dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

He speaks frequently these days about the future of journalism and the values of journalism. He has given such talks at seven universities in South Korea, two universities and the Nordic Media Festival in Norway, and at various gatherings of journalists in the U.S. and around the world.

Besides his administative duties at Medill, Richard Roth also teaches reporting, which is where his career began in 1971 at the Buffalo (N.Y.) Courier-Express.

It was there, in his rookie year as a reporter, that Roth became involved in the bloodiest prison riot in American history and there to which he has returned many times in preparing to write a book about the village of Attica, N.Y., and all the other prison towns like it.

Richard Roth was one of two...