Margaret Sullivan
AUTHOR

Margaret Sullivan

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I've been a journalist since high school, which was ... well, quite a few years ago. Over the past four decades, I broke some gender barriers. I became the first woman editor-in-chief of my hometown newspaper, The Buffalo News, where I started as a summer intern. Later, The New York Times named me its first woman "public editor" or readers representative. I did my best to address complaints about the most powerful media organization in the world, and in some cases, to call for changes. Later, I was hired as The Washington Post's media critic -- again, the first woman in that role; I won three national writing awards for my Post columns. In 2020, my first book, "Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy," was published by Columbia Global Reports. It was named a Best Book of the year by NPR and the Washington Post, and won the Porchlight Award for best current events and public affairs book of 2020. As a result of that book, I've been interviewed by Jon Stewart, Katie Couric, Dan Rather, and Ezra Klein and on NPR's Fresh Air. I am the mother of two grown children, Alex and Grace, both pursuing public-interest law careers. My cat is Ricochet (so named because he tends to get excited and bounce off walls). I live in New York City and in western New York, where my family has a cottage on beautiful Lake Erie. I've taught journalism at Columbia University, City University of New York and Duke University, where I'm on the faculty of the public policy school. I love young journalists, and have been honored to mentor many of them. My new book is "Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life." It's both a journalistic memoir and a media critique that explores the loss of public trust in the press from Watergate (in the 1970s) to now. And it proposes solutions which are crucial underpinnings for our democracy. Oh, one more thing: I am a mediocre tennis player -- but I'm working on it.
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