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

What can journalists do about the ‘Unreality Crisis’?

This is the fourth installment of a column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. It is published in partnership with the Poynter Institute. Read the previous column here. The numbers are hard for some to fathom. More than six in […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

Getting the conversation around trust in media unstuck

This is the third installment of a column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel, published in partnership with the Poynter Institute, about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. Read the first column here and the second here. Journalists — at least good ones — believe they […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

Is local journalism dying? Look closer.

This is the second installment of a column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel, published in partnership with the Poynter Institute, about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. Read the first column here. “Chaos often breeds life when order breeds habit,” wrote Henry Adams. So it […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

Thank you to these 2020 collaborators for strengthening journalism

2020 was a hinge moment in American history and for journalism. As the year passes, we wanted to take a moment to thank those with whom we were fortunate enough to collaborate. If fact-based journalism is to survive and serve democracy, it will owe much to the expertise, dedication, insight, leadership and passion of those […]
By Tom Rosenstiel

A new chapter for the press: 5 ideas for moving forward after Trump

A new column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel, published in partnership with the Poynter Institute, about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. Today, in partnership with Poynter, I launch a new column. In the coming months, it will cover a range of matters — the […]
By Tom Rosenstiel and Jane Elizabeth

Getting started: Some templates and tools for encouraging organic news fluency

Every story is an opportunity to have a conversation with your audience about what journalism is for and how journalists conduct their work. Each type of story presents different questions and different ways to encourage news fluency, in an organic and contextual manner. In this section, we’ll list nine types of stories and the unique […]
By Tom Rosenstiel and Jane Elizabeth

Journalists can change the way they build stories to create organic news fluency

When journalists talk about how they wish the public could recognize good reporting from bad reporting or even fakery, the subject often turns to whether the audience has the right skills. The discussion usually falls under the heading of “news literacy,” a body of work that typically involves a curriculum supervised by schools, heavily oriented […]
By Tom Rosenstiel and Jane Elizabeth

Next steps for promoting organic news fluency

We hope this essay will provoke some new ideas about how to help people become more discriminating consumers of news. Our recommendations boil down to a few basic ideas: Journalists have a role to play in helping consumers become more discriminating. Being fluent as a news consumer is not only the responsibility of news audiences. […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, William Buzenberg, Marjorie Connelly, and Kevin Loker

Charting new ground: The ethical terrain of nonprofit journalism

Overview A different kind of revenue, one that has nothing to do with advertising or subscriptions, is playing a larger role in journalism today. Nonprofit funding, once largely the province of public broadcasting, is becoming an important source of support for a new cohort of non-commercial news organizations —  many of them digital natives — […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, William Buzenberg, Marjorie Connelly, and Kevin Loker

Download a PDF and topline results: The ethical terrain of nonprofit journalism

For printing and offline viewing, a PDF of the report and the topline results for the nonprofit news outlets, commercial news outlets, and funders are available for download.