Former San José State journalism professor and Spartan Daily advisor William Tillinghast died on Monday night. He was 84.
He leaves behind his wife Diana Stover, who currently works at SJSU as a journalism professor and advisor.
Tillinghast, known to friends as Bill, received a bachelor’s in journalism and English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, obtained a master’s in journalism from The Ohio State University and holds a doctorate in mass media from Michigan State University.
Tillinghast started as an editor for The Hoist, a U.S. Navy newspaper in San Diego, followed by his time as a reporter for The Commodore in Hawai’i.
It was at this stint that he became the first person to ever give a tour of Pearl Harbor to Japanese officials.
He went on to be a reporter for a number of local newspapers across the country, including the San Jose Mercury News.
He was an instructor at The Ohio State University for five years where he worked as an advisor for Ohio State’s student newspaper The Lantern, and a freelance reporter for Time Magazine.
He joined SJSU faculty in 1975 when he became an advisor for the Spartan Daily. He worked alongside Roger Budrow and then Mack Lundstrom for three and seven years respectively during his tenure on the Daily.
He taught as a professor at SJSU for more than 40 years, until his retirement in 2018.
Four Spartan Daily students under his advising went on to win Pulitzer prizes – Kim Komenich, David Willman, Mark Katches and Mary Callahan.
“I took an editing class from Bill Tillinghast and immediately knew that he was the real deal,” Komenich said. “A funny, irreverent news dog like the reporters I worked with at my hometown paper when I was in high school. I felt right at home.”
He said Tillinghast and Stover became his mentors in 2009 when they helped him create four classes that became the core of SJSU’s journalism graduate program.
Komenich said he now works as an associate professor and head of the photojournalism and documentary photography sequence at San Francisco State University.
Tillinghast served as director of the Dow Jones Summer Editing Workshop at SJSU for 23 years where he helped prepare students for summer newspaper jobs.
“Bill’s critiques were real-world, sometimes a little too real for some of us, but always delivered with humor and compassion,” Komenich said. “You knew you were on a mission to get it first and more importantly, to get it right.”
