Election 2024: Is the News Media Up to the Job? A Conversation with Margaret Sullivan

Saturday, October 19, 2024 - 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Event Presenter/Author: 
Margaret Sullivan

The Program for Public Discourse invites you to join former New York Times public editor and award-winning columnist and author Margaret Sullivan to examine how the news media are covering the volatile course of Election 2024. Are mainstream news organizations successfully navigating the events of this presidential race? In a media environment crowded with distractions and misinformation, are traditional news outlets proving able to serve voters' needs? As November 5 approaches, Sullivan asks if American journalism is meeting the unprecedented challenges of this historic election.

Sullivan served as Public Editor of the New York Times from 2012 to 2016, and as media columnist for Washington Post during the 2016 and 2020 elections and their aftermaths, including the violent turmoil of January 6, 2021.  She is executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School, a weekly columnist for The Guardian US, and the author of two acclaimed books, Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy (2020) and Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life (2022). She was the first woman editor of her hometown daily paper, The Buffalo News, where she started her career as a summer intern.

In reviewing Newsroom Confidential for the New York Times, the New Yorker writer Steve Coll wrote, “Sullivan remains the critic American journalism requires, a veteran practitioner with street cred, still in touch with the ‘unaccountable joy’ of reporting and writing that continues to draw talented young people to the craft.“

Interlocutors: Nora Titone, Director of Programming and Undergraduate Research for the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse & Rachel Wiseman, Managing Editor of The Point magazine.

This event is co-sponsored by the Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, the Program for Public Thinking, the Chicago Center on Democracy, International House and the Seminary Co-op Bookstores.

This event is free and open to the public.

Reserve your spot here!

Event Location: 
Logan Center for the Arts Performance Penthouse
915 E. 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637