Michael J. Hoyt

Mike Hoyt is an editor, writer, and journalism teacher with deep experience, and co-director of the J-school’s Writing Center. 

He wrote and edited articles about journalism and its challenges for more than 26 years at the Columbia Journalism Review, starting in 1986. For ten of those years—2001 through 2011—he was the editor, responsible for all content and leading the magazine through two redesigns, the creation of its website, and CJR’s 40th and 50th anniversaries. He is co-editor of a CJR book, “Reporting Iraq: An Oral History of the War by the Journalists Who Covered It,” published in 2007 by Melville House.

Before CJR, Mike was a reporter at two newspapers, a copy editor at Business Week, and a freelance writer. After CJR, he continued teaching at the J-school alongside several faculty members, including Michael Shapiro, Daniel Alarcon, and Alyson Martin.

He is the editor of the Delacorte Review, a home for longform narrative nonfiction, and recently edited another book, “The Last Letter: A Father’s Struggle, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Long Shadow of the Holocaust,” by Karen Gordon.

Mike grew up in Kansas City and lives in northern Connecticut with his wife, Mary Ellen Schoonmaker, the other co-director of the Writing Center.