Geneva Overholser has garnered much recognition for excellence in journalism. Prior to accepting her position at USC, she held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting at the Missouri School of Journalism, where she was based in the school’s Washington bureau.
Overholser was editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, leading the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. While at the Register, she also earned recognition as Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation and was named “The Best in the Business” by American Journalism Review.
Overholser has been ombudsman of The Washington Post, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times, a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group, and a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun. She has also been a columnist for the Columbia Journalism Review and a frequent contributor to Poynter.org [BROKEN LINK]. She spent five years overseas, working and writing in Paris and Kinshasa.
Through the Annenberg Public Policy Center, in 2006 Overholser published a manifesto on the future of journalism titled On Behalf of Journalism: A Manifesto for Change. She is also co-editor, with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of the volume The Press, part of the Oxford University Press Institutions of American Democracy series.
Overholser serves on the boards of the Center for Public Integrity, the Committee of Concerned Journalists, the John S. Knight Fellowships at Stanford University, the Fund for Independence in Journalism, and the Academy of American Poets, and on the Journalism Advisory Committee of the Knight Foundation. Overholser was a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board for nine years and chair for one year. She also served as an officer of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Overholser holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in history from Wellesley College.
