Past Fellows and Visiting Faculty
Spring 2009 Fellows
James O’Shea served as editor and executive vice president of the Los Angeles Times from November 2006 to January 2008. Previously O’Shea worked for the Chicago Tribune in many leadership roles, culminating in his position as managing editor (2001–2006). O’Shea joined the Chicago Tribune in 1979 from the Des Moines Register, where he had been a reporter, editor and Washington correspondent. In 1982 he joined the Tribune‘s Washington bureau, where he covered both national budget policy and national security. O’Shea helped the Chicago Tribune develop RedEye, originally a weekday, quick-read newspaper distributed free in the Chicago area and now also available online. He began his journalism career in 1968 as a U.S. Army correspondent, covering U.S. troops stationed in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. A graduate of the University of Missouri, O’Shea is the author of two books, The Daisy Chain, about the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s, and Dangerous Company, co-authored with Charles Madigan. At the Shorenstein Center he will examine conflicts between editors and owners of newspapers. Paper PDF
Maralee Schwartz spent more than two decades as a reporter and editor at the Washington Post. She began her career as a journalist at the Washington Monthly. She joined the Washington Post in 1979 as a researcher on the national staff, eventually becoming a political reporter. During the 1992 general election, Schwartz moved onto the assignment desk, editing political stories, and on Election Night, was named congressional editor. After the 1996 election, Schwartz became national political editor, responsible for all national political coverage as well as coverage of the White House. In 2006 after more than 27 years covering national stories, Schwartz was named deputy business editor in charge of corporate governance, white collar crime and the markets. In the fall of 2007, Schwartz was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics. She was the Visiting Murrow Lecturer in the Practice of Press and Politics at the Kennedy School in the fall of 2008. She taught a course titled “How Politicians Connect with Voters: The 2008 Presidential Campaign.” Her research as a Shorenstein Center Fellow will focus on nonprofit journalism. Paper PDF
Mitchell Stephens is a professor of journalism and mass communications at New York University. He is the author of A History of News, an extended history of journalism that has been translated into four languages and was a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year.” His latest book, The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, a historical analysis of our current communications revolution, was published by Oxford University Press. Professor Stephens is also the author of Broadcast News, the most widely used radio and television news textbook, and the co-author of Writing and Reporting the News. In recent years, he has written numerous articles on media issues and aspects of contemporary thought for publications such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Columbia Journalism Review. His research project will argue for a proposed change in the priorities of our major news organizations providing extra value-informed analysis. Paper PDF
Michael Traugott is a professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, where he looks at the mass media and its impact on American politics. This includes research on the use of the media by candidates in their campaigns and its impact on voters, as well as the ways that campaigns are covered and the impact of this coverage on candidates. He has a particular interest in the use of surveys and polls and the way they are used to cover campaigns and elections. Traugott has consulted for a number of media and news organizations on their coverage of elections, including networks, newspapers, and the Voter News Service, the national exit poll operation. He is the author of 12 books and more than 75 articles and book chapters. In 2008 he revised the The Voters’ Guide to Election Polls with Paul Lavrakas, and he co-edited the Sage Handbook of Public Opinion Research with Wolfgang Donsbach. He is a past president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and just completed a term as president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research. His research will focus on polling and newsmaking in the 2008 campaign. Paper PDF
Spring 2009 Visiting Faculty
Nicco Mele will be the Visiting Lecturer in the Murrow Chair. He will teach a Kennedy School course on the Internet as a mechanism for communication, with a special emphasis on its use in politics. He is the founder and president of EchoDitto, a leading Internet strategy consulting company. Mele has broad experience working with emerging technologies and is a considered a pioneer in the social media and Web 2.0 field. As the Internet operations director of Governor Howard Dean’s presidential primary campaign in 2003, Mele managed all technical, functional and design aspects of Gov. Dean’s national web presence. Following the Dean campaign, one of EchoDitto’s first clients was a then little-known state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama, who was running for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Mele is a co-founder of GeniusRocket.com, a crowd-sourced creative ad agency, and he is a co-founder of ProxyDemocracy.com, an online resource for proxy voting and shareholder resolutions. In fall 2008 Mele was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics.
