PRESS FREEDOM UNDER ASSAULT: PRESERVING OUR DEMOCRACY

OUR PANELISTS + CALLS TO ACTION

MODERATOR SYLVESTER MONROE '73

Former Assistant Foreign Editor, The Washington Post

Freelance Journalist and Editor

Twitter (X): @sylvestermonroe

Sylvester Monroe '73 served as an Assistant Foreign Editor at The Washington Post in charge of reporting from Europe and South Asia from 2014 to December 2017. During his storied career, Monroe has had a variety of important assignments with Newsweek, TIME, The San Jose Mercury News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Ebony. He is currently working on a book about the black men in Harvard’s 1973 graduating class.

Monroe graduated from Harvard University, cum laude with a B.A. in social studies in 1973. He then started as a full-time correspondent in Newsweek’s Boston bureau, where he covered the Kenneth Edelin abortion trial and school desegregation in South Boston. He served as Newsweek’s Chicago correspondent and from 1976 to 1978, as Deputy Bureau Chief from 1978 to 1983 and as Boston Bureau Chief from 1983 to 1985, when he joined Newsweek’s Washington bureau.

Monroe won several awards for his reporting on such stories as “Why Johnny Can’t Write”, “American Innovation”, and the three part series “Why Public Schools are Flunking”. Monroe covered Harold Washington’s successful Chicago mayoral campaign in 1983 and Reverend Jesse L. Jackson’s bid for the U.S. presidency in 1984. In 1987, Newsweek featured a cover story about Monroe’s return to Chicago’s housing projects to follow up on eleven of his childhood friends. The story, “Brothers” co-authored with Newsweek senior editor, Peter Goldman, developed into a best selling book, Brothers: Black and Poor—A True Story of Courage and Survival.

Monroe joined TIME Magazine in 1989 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent. There, he worked as a principal reporter for post riot coverage of the Rodney King trial, as well as on the 1993 cover story, “Is L.A. Going to Hell?” and a 1994 feature about Minister Louis Farrakhan. Monroe became deputy managing editor of the San Jose Mercury News in 2001, but later that year joined the Atlanta Journal – Constitution as Sunday editor for the National /Foreign Desk. In 2006, Monroe joined the staff of Ebony Magazine as Senior Editor, where he was political editor and covered Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Since leaving Ebony in 2009, he has worked as a freelance editor and writer for several publications including The Root.comand The Defendersonline.com. Monroe has been a contract editor and writer on the Corporate Citizenship Team at Oracle Corp. and Oracle Education Foundation.

A long time member of the National Association of Black Journalists, Monroe served on the board of St. Georges Preparatory School and is a frequently sought after as a public speaker.

GEOFFREY COWAN

University Professor of Communication

Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership

Geoffrey Cowan is a lawyer, academic administrator, government official, best-selling author, distinguished professor, nonprofit executive, and Emmy Award-winning producer. After serving as the 22nd director of the voice of America, Cowan served as dean of USC Annenberg from 1996 to 2007. When he stepped down, he was named a university professor, the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership, and the director of USC Annenberg’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. He is also on the faculty of USC’s Gould School of Law.

In 2010, Cowan became the first president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. As president, he hosted a range of important retreats and three summit meetings with President Barack Obama, including his historic meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in June 2013.

Cowan’s books include: See No Evil: The Backstage Battle Over Sex and Violence on Television, the best-selling The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America’s Greatest Lawyer, and Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary. He also co-wrote the award-winning play, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, and won an Emmy Award as executive producer of the television movie Mark Twain and Me.

Cowan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Walter Lippmann fellow of the Academy of Political and Social Science.

A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Cowan is married to Aileen Adams, former deputy mayor of Los Angeles and former California Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs. They have two children, Gabriel Cowan, a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, and Mandy Adams Wolf, a teacher at The Center for Early Education.

SUSAN GOLDBERG

President and CEO, GBH

Twitter (X): @susanbgoldberg, @wgbh

Bluesky: @wgbh.org

Susan Goldberg is President and CEO of GBH, the public media company in Boston that is the largest producer of multiplatform content for PBS, partner to NPR and PRX, and winner of the 2024 Oscar for Best Documentary for Frontline's "20 Days in Mariupol." Before assuming that role in 2022, she was Editor in Chief and Editorial Director of National Geographic, where she led the magazine to 11 National Magazine Awards, among other honors, over eight years. She was the Editor of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the Executive Editor of the San Jose Mercury News, and has held editorial positions at Bloomberg News, USA Today, the Detroit Free Press and the Seattle Post-intelligencer. She was among the leaders of reporting honored with the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting at the Mercury News, and has led work that was a finalist for the Pulitzer seven other times. A six-time juror for the Pulitzer Prize, Goldberg is board president of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and a board member of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Goldberg holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University.

KEVIN MERIDA

Former Executive Editor at the Los Angeles Times

Twitter (X): @meridak

Bluesky: @meridak.bsky.social‬

Kevin Merida is the former executive editor of the Los Angeles Times. During his two-and-a-half years in the role, the newspaper won three Pulitzer Prizes.

Before joining the Times in June 2021, Merida was a senior vice president at ESPN and editor in chief of The Undefeated, a multimedia platform that explored the intersections of race, sports, and culture. During his tenure at ESPN, he also oversaw the investigative/news enterprise unit, the television shows “E:60” and “Outside the Lines,” and chaired ESPN’s editorial board. While at ESPN, the journalism he oversaw received three National Sports Emmys and 12 nominations.

Before joining ESPN, Merida spent 22 years at the Washington Post in a variety of reporting and editing roles including managing editor for news and features coverage. As managing editor, he helped lead the Post to four Pulitzer Prizes, and the newspaper embarked on a digital transformation that made it one of the fastest growing news organizations in the country.

In his 44-year career in journalism, Merida has covered local, state and national politics, Congress and the White House. He has covered five presidential campaigns and supervised the coverage of two others.

Merida is co-author of “Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas” and “Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs.” In 1990, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist as part of a Dallas Morning News team reporting on the world’s “hidden wars.” He was named Journalist of the Year in 2000 by the National Assn. of Black Journalists and received NABJ’s Chuck Stone Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. Merida is also a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.