Sewell Chan

Sewell Chan joined the Columbia Journalism Review as executive editor in September 2024. A longtime journalist, he is passionate about journalism ethics, new business models for news, and the urgent need to support working journalists who face unprecedented challenges.

Previously, Chan was editor in chief of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit newsroom based in Austin, from 2021 to 2024. During his tenure the Tribune won the National Magazine Award and the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, all for the first time. From 2018 to 2021, Chan was a deputy managing editor and then the editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw coverage that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

Chan worked at The New York Times from 2004 to 2018, as a metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy Op-Ed editor and international news editor. He began his career as a reporter at The Washington Post in 2000. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

A native New Yorker, Chan grew up in an immigrant family and was the first in his family to finish college. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in social studies and received a master’s degree in politics from Oxford, where he studied on a British Marshall scholarship.

Chan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of the Henry Luce Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Freedom House, and the Pulitzer Prizes.

Watch Chan moderate a post-election panel hosted by Columbia Journalism School, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and the Columbia University Office of the President: https://youtu.be/MLbGUpiOGPk