Bill Kovach, [1] Founding Chairman and Acting Director

Bill Kovach is the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and its programs.

He has been a journalist and writer for almost 50 years. In that time he was chief of the New York Times Washington Bureau, and served as executive editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and curator of the Nieman Fellowships at Harvard University. He served two years as Ombudsman for Brill’s Content magazine and in 2005 was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Kovach is co-author with Tom Rosenstiel of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect [2] (Crown, 2001), which was awarded Harvard University’s Goldsmith Book Prize (2002), the Sigma Delta Chi award for research in journalism, and the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism. Kovach and Rosenstiel also co-authored Warp Speed: America in the Age of Mixed Media [3] (Century Press, 1999), which earned an SDX Award for research in journalism in 2000. Kovach was also a contributing writer for Profiles in Courage for Our Time (Hyperion, 2002), The Prevailing South (Peachtree Press, 1988), The Art of Writing Non Fiction (Syracuse Press, 1986) and Assignment America (Quadrangle Press, 1984).

In 2006 Kovach was appointed to the faculty of the University of Missouri Journalism School. In 2004 he filled the John Seigenthaler Chair in Excellence in First Amendment Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. And from 1994-96 he lectured on Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Other recognition Kovach has received include the following awards: the 2006 Journalism Medal of Honor from the Journalist’s Union of Thessalonika, Greece; the 2003 Richard M. Clurman Award for Mentoring; the 2000 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award accompanied by an honorary Ph.D. from Colby College; the 2000 Harvard Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism; the 1996 Sigma Delta Chi First Amendment Award; and the1992 AEJMC Professional Freedom and Responsibility Award.

Kovach is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves on a number of boards including: the board of directors of the Center for Public Integrity; the board of incorporators and the advisory board of Harvard Magazine; and the advisory boards of the Consortium of Investigative Reporters, the Native American Journalists Foundation, The Right Question Project, and the Encyclopedia of the Appalachians.