Milton Coleman

Milton Coleman
Deputy managing Editor, The Washington Post

Mr. Coleman currently serves as deputy managing editor of The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 1976 as a reporter on the Metropolitan staff, where he covered politics and government first in Montgomery County, Maryland and later in the District of Columbia. He also wrote a weekly column, "City Hall Notebook.”

In March of 1980, he became assistant city editor and later that year was named city editor. In 1983, he moved to the national news staff and covered minorities and immigration, the 1984 presidential campaign, state and local governments, and Congress. In 1986, Mr. Coleman was named assistant managing editor/metropolitan news and directed The Post's local coverage for the next decade. In July of1996, he was promoted to his current position as deputy managing editor where he helps to direct coverage and run the Newsroom Personnel Office.

In addition, Mr. Coleman has been the principal architect of the newspaper's strategy and development of zoned editions and has helped to lead efforts to improve coverage of Latinos, including news in Spanish. He began his journalism career as a reporter for the Milwaukee Courier, a black weekly. He subsequently worked as a reporter/editor at the African World newspaper in Greensboro, NC, the All-African News Service, and WHUR-FM news in Washington, D.C., Community News Service of New York and the Minneapolis Star. Mr. Coleman received a bachelor of fine arts degree in music history and literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and in 1998, was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus of UWM.

In 1971, he was a Southern Education Foundation Fellow, and in 1974 a fellow in the Michele Clark Summer Program for Minority Journalists at the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He has served as a member of the nominating committee for the Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, as a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, and the Associated Press Sports Editors, National Association of Black Journalists and Asian American Journalist Association awards, and as a judge and chairman of the judging committee for the Seldon Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. He is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Minority Media Executives and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

He is a past member of the Board of Visitors of the School of Communications at The University of Alabama and the Board of Directors of the American Press Institute. Mr. Coleman is a member of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ where he was chairperson of the Board of Trustees and co-chairman of the scholarship committee. He also is a member of the Project Excellence Scholarship Committee and coordinator of the Friends of Herb Denton committee, which each year selects a recipient for an $80,000 college scholarship in memory of the former Washington Post editor and foreign correspondent.

Mr. Coleman has been a Boy Scout leader since 1982, serving at various times as scoutmaster of Troop 1650 in Southeast Washington and Troop 544 in Northwest Washington. He was honored with the District Award of Merit and the Silver Beaver Award, the highest award given to volunteer leaders. In 1994, he was one of five Scout leaders in the nation given the Spirit of Scouting Award by the National Council of Boy Scouts of America for outstanding contributions to Scouting in America’s inner cities. Mr. Coleman attended API’s J. Montgomery Curtis Memorial Seminar.