Visiting Chairs

Current chair

Kelly McBride

Kelly McBride, a journalist, writer and media ethics commentator, is Indiana University’s 2026-27 Poynter Chair. She is senior vice president at The Poynter Institute of Media Ethics and chair of the Newmark Ethics Center at Poynter. As part of her work, she guides professional news organizations to develop best practices in the service of people and democracy. Since 2020 she has served as the public editor for NPR, where she handles audience questions about NPR's journalistic credibility. She's addressed accusations of liberal bias, questions about NPR's coverage of President Donald Trump and concerns about Nina Totenberg's friendships with individual Supreme Court justices. In the past, she filled a similar role for ESPN. McBride is a co-editor of The New Ethics of Journalism: Guiding Principles for the 21st Century, and author of several articles on media ethics for The New York Times, BBC, CNN, and Washington Post. 

Past chairs

Carol Giacomo

Website:
https://www.nytimes.com/by/carol-giacomo

In 2019, Carol Giacomo was named the Indiana University Poynter Chair. Giacomo is an award-winning correspondent and writes about foreign affairs for The New York Times, whose editorial board she joined in 2007. Her career has taken her all around the world for reporting, research, and speaking engagements. Watch Giacomo’s lecture.

Website:
https://www.nytimes.com/column/linda-greenhouse

Linda Greenhouse, the Indiana University Poynter Chair for 2022-23, is Senior Research Scholar at Yale Law School and reported on the Supreme Court for the New York Times for 30 years and wrote a twice-monthly opinion column on the court for another 10 years. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for her reporting and is the author of several books about the court, including the recently published Justice on the Brink: The Death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Rise of Amy Coney Barrett, and Twelve Months that Transformed the Supreme Court. Watch Greenhouses' lecture here.

Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein, the legendary journalist and bestselling author who broke the Watergate story for the Washington Post (with his colleague Bob Woodward) visited Indiana University as the 2024-25 Poynter Chair and Visiting Roy W. Howard Journalist-in-Residence in the Media School. Their reporting on President Richard Nixon and his administration's direct involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters led to the resignation of President Nixon in 1974. Bernstein is a political analyst for CNN and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair. Watch Bernstein's lecture here.

Jean Twenge

Website:
https://www.jeantwenge.com/

Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, was Indiana University’s 2025-26 Poynter Co-Chair. She is the author of more than 190 scientific publications and seven books. Through her talks, she helps parents, teachers, and other concerned groups understand young people and their relationship to technology. Her research explores the psychological and social effects of digital technology and screen use, as well as generational changes in attitudes, values, and well-being. Twenge’s work has been covered in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, and The Washington Post. 

Jonathan Haidt

Website:
https://jonathanhaidt.com/

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, was Indiana University’s 2025-26 Poynter Co-Chair. His research has examined the intuitive foundations of morality, how morality varies across cultural and political divisions, and more recently, the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction. Haidt is the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including The Anxious Generation. He has given four TED talks and been named a TIME100 Health leader.

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