bryan monroe

Bryan Monroe is the new Editor of CNNPolitics.com. He has been a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and the CEO of The Monroe Media Group, has been the Vice President and Editorial Director of EBONY and JET Magazines at Johnson Publishing Company and has contributed to ongoing coverage for CNN. Formerly the assistant vice president/news of Knight Ridder and the president of the National Association of Black Journalists, Bryan helped lead the team that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

He led efforts to transform the legendary magazines and developed new platforms online and in digital media for Johnson Publishing Company. Most recently, he has led the coverage of the presidential campaign and historic election of Barack Obama, dramatically elevated the profile

and quality of the historic publications and shown increases in single copy sales and market share in a period when other magazines are declining. He also helped invent and then oversaw the launch of ebonyjet.com, helped spearhead breakthrough deals in digital archives and new media with the Associated Press and Google. In 2008 “min” magazine named Ebony as one of the Hottest Reinventions in the magazine industry.

Editorially, Bryan has also worked on cover stories on Halle Berry and landed what was to be the last interview with Michael Jackson before his death. In November 2008, just a week after Election Day, Bryan landed the first, exclusive interview with President Barack Obama, a day before CBS News 60 Minutes. In 2007, he led the charge in the magazine against the use of the n-word and spearheaded an Ebony cover on “The Culture of Disrespect.” He also writes regularly about technology, politics and other issues.

As the 16th President of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the oldest and largest journalism association of color in America, he led that organization to record growth, membership and revenue from 2005-2007. In that role, he challenged the industry to improve diversity, led a delegation of 11 journalists to Tanzania to cover malaria and HIV/AIDS, became the first head of a U.S. media organization to speak in the United Nations General Assembly Great Hall, and, in April 2007, was the first national voice to call for the firing of radio shock jock Don Imus after his comments about the Rutgers Women’s basketball team.

Before joining Knight Ridder’s corporate staff, Bryan spent 16 years at various Knight Ridder papers and 20 years in journalism, most notably at the San Jose Mercury News where he rose to the position of deputy managing editor, after serving as an assistant managing editor, reporter, assistant city editor and design director, managing a staff of more than 200 journalists.

He also led Knight Ridder’s efforts during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, helping the staff of the Sun Herald, the newspaper in Biloxi, Miss., publish continuously throughout the deadly storm and aftermath. His and the team’s efforts were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service. Bryan also received the Award of Valor from the National Association of Minority Media Executives (NAMME) for his work during the coverage of the storm.

He was also part of the team that helped the Grand Forks Herald win the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of the flood that devastated that rural community.

In 2003, Bryan completed a term at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow

, the oldest and most prestigious fellowship in American journalism. While there, he focused on Leadership and Creativity, studying at the Harvard Business School, The Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Law School.

In 2007, he was named the University of Washington’s College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumni, where he graduated with a B.A. in communications in 1987. He was also the first African-American editor of the University of Washington DAILY, a student publication there with a circulation well over 20,000. Also in 2007, he was inducted into that university’s Alumni Hall of Fame for the School of Communications and in 2008 was named one of the university’s 100 Most Distinguished Alumni.

Before joining the Mercury News in 1991, Bryan was assistant project director for Knight Ridder’s 25/43 Project, a newspaper R&D initiative which created a daily living laboratory for experimentation into the future of newspapers; this “Boca Project” later served as a model for future thinking for newspapers around the globe.

He has worked as Director of Photography and Design at the Myrtle Beach (SC) Sun News and as a photographer at The Seattle Times, the Roanoke (VA) Times & World News and United Press International.

Bryan has won numerous regional, national and international journalism awards and has lectured all over the world, from Cape Town, South Africa to Sydney, Australia to Dubai, UAE. He has been recognized by Presstime magazine as one of the “20 Under 40” — the 20 top American journalists under 40 years old — and was named by MediaWeek magazine as one of the nation's “Media Elite.” In 2008, he was also named by Folio Magazine as one of the magazine industry’s 40 most influential innovators.

In 2003, San Francisco’s CityFlight magazine named him one of the “10 Most Influential African Americans in the Bay Area.” He is a graduate of Community Leadership

San Jose Silicon Valley, was a member of the San Jose Leadership Council and was a member of 100 Black Men of Silicon Valley, Inc., a mentoring and leadership group of African American civic leaders.

Before being elected president of NABJ, the nation’s largest journalism organization of color serving over 4,000 members, he served as a two-term vice president/print for NABJ and was a local chapter president in the Bay Area. Bryan has been vice president of Unity: Journalists of Color and was the chairman of the 2008 Unity convention in Chicago.

Bryan has appeared in numerous media, including ABC Nightline, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CBS News, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, XM Potus, The Joe Madison Show, The Rev. Al Sharpton Show, The Warren Ballentine Show, The Seattle Times, Ebony Magazine, as well as many local and regional outlets.

He was a picture editor and coordinator for the photo book and museum exhibit, “Songs of My People” (Little, Brown/Time Warner), and was associate producer on “Tom Dowd & The Language of Music,” a documentary film that debuted at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and won numerous awards.

He has served on several non-profit boards, including being chairman of the board of judges for The Batten Awards for Innovation at the University of Maryland. He is on the Board of Advisors for rrripple.com, a Silicon Valley tech startup company, and Urban Access Media Group, a Chicago-based private digital television network. He also volunteers with the local Cub Scouts.