Tom Rosenstiel

Former Executive Director, American Press Institute

One of the most recognized thinkers in the country on the future of news, Tom Rosenstiel led API for nine years, leaving in 2021 to become the Eleanor Merrill Visiting Professor on the Future of Journalism at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill School of Journalism. He established API as a leader in the effort to make local journalism sustainable. Under his leadership, API published groundbreaking research, developed a cutting-edge news analytics tool that is used by hundreds of newsrooms, and took over management of the news leadership training program Table Stakes.

Tom is the author of 10 books, including three novels. Before joining API in January 2013, he was founder and for 16 years director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, one of the five original projects of the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. He was co-founder and vices chair of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

His first novel, Shining City (2017), about a Supreme Court nomination, was an NPR Book of the Year. His second, The Good Lie (2019), about a terrorist incident, was a Washington Post bestseller. His third, Oppo, about a presidential campaign, was published in December 2019.

Among his seven books on journalism, politics and ethics is The Elements of Journalism: What News People Should Know and the Public Should Expect, co-authored with Bill Kovach, which has been translated into more than 25 languages and is used widely in journalism education worldwide. It has been called “a modern classic” (New York Times) and one of the five best books ever written on journalism (Wall Street Journal). Tom’s media criticism, his nonfiction books and his research work at API and at PEJ have generated more than 50,000 academic citations.

During his journalism career he worked as media writer for the Los Angeles Times for a decade, chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek, press critic for MSNBC, business editor of the Peninsula Times Tribune, a reporter for Jack Anderson’s Washington Merry Go ‘Round column, and began his career at the Woodside Country Almanac in his native northern California.

He is the winner of the Goldsmith book Award from Harvard, four Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Journalism Research from SPJ and four awards for national for media criticism from Penn State. He has been named a fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, the organization’s highest honor, the Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the University of Missouri Journalism School, the Dewitt Carter Reddick Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement in the Field of Communications from the University of Texas at Austin, and the Columbia Journalism School Distinguished Alumni Award.

Follow him @TomRosenstiel.

By Tom Rosenstiel

Ten Questions with Mark Jurkowitz of Pew Research

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released case studies of newspapers beating industry norms in revenue, either in digital or print. The following is a Q&A with the report’s author, Mark Jurkowitz, who spent months doing the research.
By Tom Rosenstiel

The Next Journalism will be a service that helps build community

This column, launching today, will be about where news media culture is heading. We are calling it The Next Journalism. The subject matter will range widely. The search for new revenue to subsidize the mission of journalism will be part of the focus. So will experiments in how to use new technologies and platforms to […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

Newspaper readers are not graying as quickly as reported

My friend Alan Mutter wrote something startling this week in his always thought-provoking blog, Reflections of a Newsosaur: “The population of people reading newspaper has aged dramatically in the last three years.” By Mutter’s analysis, roughly three-quarters of newspaper readers are now over age 45. That, according to his calculations, is up dramatically from half in […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

What China press censorship protests say about digital shift and democracy

It is telling that the protests in China this week over government control involve a newspaper and censorship — not a military tank in a public square. China has walked the fragile road of modernism and capitalism without democracy. But history keeps repeating one message about trying to balance economic advances without freedom. Information by its nature is democratizing.