Courtesy of Tom Rosenstiel

Curiosity Expert: Tom Rosenstiel

Director, the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism

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Author and journalist Tom Rosenstiel designed the Project for Excellence in Journalism and directs its activities. A journalist for more than 30 years, he worked as media critic for the Los Angeles Times and chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek magazine and is vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, an initiative engaged in conducting a national conversation among journalists about standards and values, which he co-founded and formerly managed.

At PEJ, he is the editor and principal author of the Project's Annual Report on the State of the News Media, a comprehensive report on the health of American journalism. He also directs the Project's other research efforts, including its weekly real time content analysis of the mainstream press called the News Coverage Index and its content analysis of blogs and social media called the New Media Index.

His newest book, with Bill Kovach, is Blur: How to Know What's True in the Age of Information Overload, (Bloomsbury 2010). Among his other books, Rosenstiel is the author with Kovach of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (Crown 2001, updated 2007), winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University, the Society of Professional Journalist Sigma Delta Chi award for research in journalism and the Bart Richards Award for Media Criticism from Penn State. "Elements" has been described as "one of five essential books" on journalism (Roger Mudd, the Wall Street Journal), a "modern classic" (William Safire, the New York Times) and "the most important book on the relationship of journalism and democracy published in the last 50 years" (Roy Clark, the Poynter Institute). It is a required text in most journalism schools in the country and has been translated into more than 23 languages. Rosenstiel and Kovach are also authors together of Warp Speed: America in The Age of Mixed Media (Century Foundation 1999), which also won the SDX Award for research in journalism. He is co-editor of Thinking Clearly: Cases in Journalistic Decision Making (Columbia University Press 2003). We Interrupt This Newscast: How to Improve TV News and Win Ratings, Too. (Cambridge University Press) was published in 2007. Rosenstiel is also the author of Strange Bedfellows: How Television and the Presidential Candidates Changed American Politics 1992, (Hyperion 1993).

His writing also has appeared in such publications as Esquire, The New Republic, the New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and the Washington Monthly. A former media critic for MSNBC's The News with Brian Williams, he is a frequent commentator on radio and television and in print. Rosenstiel is also co-author of CCJ's "Traveling Curriculum," a mid-career education program that has trained more than 6,000 journalists in print, TV and online newsrooms nationwide. He is a frequent lecturer and analyst on the revolution in media.