Margaret Sullivan joining Columbia Journalism School as Executive Director of the Newmark Center

Margaret Sullivan, weekly columnist for the Guardian US, will become the Executive Director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security on January 1, 2024. She is returning to Columbia Journalism School, where she previously taught Audience and Engagement courses.

In her role at the Guardian, Ms. Sullivan writes on media, politics and culture; she also served as the 2023 Jack and Pamela Egan Visiting Professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Dewitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy.

“We’re tremendously excited to welcome Margaret Sullivan back to Columbia in this new capacity as Executive Director of the Newmark Center,” said Jelani Cobb, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism. “There’s no one better equipped to lead a center concerned with the thorny questions of ethics, security, journalism and democracy. We’re eager to start working with her.”

Prior to her time at Duke University, she wrote extensively on journalism ethics and press freedom as a columnist for The Washington Post. Her work there, and as the Public Editor of the New York Times from 2012 to 2016, focused on the intersection of politics, democracy and media. She also is the former executive editor of her hometown daily newspaper, The Buffalo News, where she began as a summer intern. 

“Margaret has spent her career protecting our country, shining light on our democracy and those who threaten it,” said Craig Newmark, media entrepreneur and member of the Columbia Journalism Review Board of Overseers. “That patriotism and her lifelong commitment to trustworthy journalism make her the ideal person to lead the Center and its critical work.”

Sullivan was recognized in June by journalism educators around the nation as the winner of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s First Amendment Award, and, in 2020, she won Penn State University’s Bart Richards award for outstanding media criticism. A former member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, she was elected this year to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

In addition to her work in journalism, Sullivan has published two books. In 2020, she introduced “Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy” (Columbia Global Reports) and in 2022 “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-stained Life” (St. Martin’s Press). Both were  acclaimed.

Columbia Journalism School established the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security and its faculty chair with a $10 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, created by Craig Newmark. The goal of the center is to advance journalism ethics education and industry practices in the digital age.