Susan E Tifft, Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy  

Office Location: 139 Sanford Building
Office Phone: (919) 613-7342, (919) 613-7330
Email Address: susan.tifft@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Media and Communications
    • Media Ethics
    • Media Ownership

Education:
Masters of Public Administration, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1982
B.A., English, Duke University, 1973

Research Categories: Media Ethics and Media Ownership

Research Description: Research: Media ownership and its effects on the news; media ethics; investigative journalism; the intersection of journalism and public policy

Recent Publications   (More Publications)

  1. S.E. Tifft. "Hundreds of articles over nine years at TIME magazine." ().
  2. S.E. Tifft. "Articles." (). Other articles in The New Yorker, The New York Times, TALK, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, Columbia Journalism Review, USA Today, Nieman Reports, Editor & Publisher, Media Studies Center Journal, The Los Angeles Times, News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), Legal Times of Washington, Working Woman, MORE, Glamour, Savvy, Executive Female, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), and education policy publications of Scholastic Publications, Inc.
  3. S.E. Tifft. ""Out of the Shadows"." Smithsonian Magazine (February, 2005).
  4. S.E. Tifft & Michael Schudson. "American Journalism in Historical Perspective." American Institutions of Democracy: The Press. Oxford University Press, 2005
  5. S.E. Tifft. "Special Interests Corrupt What Is and Isn't News." op-ed, USA Today (April, 2004).

Bio/Profile
Susan Tifft is the Eugene C. Patterson Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. She is the co-author, with Alex Jones, of The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times (Little Brown, 1999), which won the A.M. Sperber Award for Exceptional Achievement in Writing and Research and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. Her first biography, also co-authored with Jones, was The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty, an acclaimed biography of the family behind the Louisville newspapers (Summit Books, 1991). She is currently at work on a book, for Penguin Press, about the longevity revolution and women's unique place in it.

Before becoming a journalist, Tifft was a press secretary for the Federal Election Commission and the 1980 Democratic National Convention, and a speechwriter for the Carter-Mondale campaign. She also served as director of public affairs for the Urban Institute. From 1982 to 1991 she was a national writer and associate editor for TIME Magazine, where she wrote major articles on politics, economics, foreign affairs and education. She has a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She divides her time between Durham, N.C., and her home in Cambridge, Mass.

Susan E Tifft