Margaret M. Sullivan

Margaret Sullivan, weekly columnist for the Guardian US, is the Executive Director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security. This marked her return 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.

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.

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.