Academic gamble.

There's just something about disgraced, or semi-disgraced, journalists. Those who worked for them, or with them, may spend a lot of time scrubbing off the bad odor. But no matter what their crime, they still have a strange, almost unhealthy, appeal to some high levels of newspaper management. Plagiarists, or fiction writers disguised as non-fiction writers, get book contracts and deals as columnists, and the more heinous the crime, the bigger the salary. Executives who first hired, then lived with or covered up for, the dishonest practices, get even more lucrative deals, or jobs as professors of journalism in prestigious universities.

And now comes news that Cole Campbell, the biggest flimflam man since J. Pierpont Finch of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," has been named dean of the School of Journalism of the University of Nevada, in Reno, Nev., once famous as the home of the six-week divorce.

The university's relationship to the University of Nevada--Las Vegas, where Charlie Spoonhour coached basketball, is like that of the University of Missouri--Columbia to the University of Missouri--Rolla. Campbell, who reportedly will earn a salary in six figures, served as editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch until people realized that he was one of many emperors who wore no clothes.

Still, the idea of Campbell teaching journalism to young people is rather mind-boggling. What he did at the Post, where he tried to rebuild not only the newspaper, but all of journalism, into a strange conglomerate that was neither fish nor fowl. It became merely a place for him to fail in an attempt to weave a magic spell, was rewarded with a large salary.