Newhouse School of Communications
LORRAINE BRANHAM
Lorraine Branham became dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in July 2008. In her first year at the school, Branham has focused on developing professional partnerships in an effort to address the issues raised by a rapidly changing media industry. Under her leadership, the school has continued to move toward a multimedia emphasis, with the launch of a multimedia storytelling class, the development of a student-produced newszine, continued curricular overhaul and other activities. She also facilitated the school’s entry into News21, a journalism student fellowship program created by the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism; hosted a major on-campus symposium examining the work of legendary television executive Fred Silverman ’58; and secured major gifts to support students and academic programming in the school. In addition, Branham was a driving force behind the establishment of SU’s Semester in Los Angeles, a satellite campus program that will engage students in professional internships, specialized course work and regular interactions with industry leaders on the West Coast. The program will begin in Fall 2009.
Before coming to Newhouse, Branham was director of the School of Journalism and G.B. Dealey Regents Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT).
Branham joined the UT faculty in 2002 after a 25-year career as a newspaper editor, editorial writer and reporter. She was previously the assistant to the publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and senior vice president and executive editor of the Tallahassee Democrat, and held several positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer, including associate managing editor for features. She also worked as a reporter at the Philadelphia Tribune; the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J.; the Philadelphia Bulletin; and the Baltimore Sun.
She has taught reporting and writing at Temple University and has taught in the summer program for minority journalists at the University of California, Berkeley. She has been a Hearst Visiting Professional-in-Residence at the University of Missouri, the University of Florida and the California Polytechnic Institute in San Luis Obispo.
In addition, she was assistant managing editor for the inaugural ASNE Reporter Newspaper, the convention newspaper published by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and staffed by college journalists.
Branham twice served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize journalism awards and for three years as a judge for the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards Program, the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism. She has also sat on the board of visitors of Florida A&M University's School of Graphic Arts and Journalism.
She is a member of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the National Association of Minority Media Executives, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS).
Branham holds a bachelor's degree in television, radio and film from Temple University. She also attended the Women in Management Program at the University of Baltimore and the Advanced Executive Program at Northwestern University. In addition, she was awarded a nine-month John S. Knight Fellowship to Stanford University, where she studied American foreign policy in third world countries and media management.
Her areas of interest include women in leadership, covering diverse communities, journalism ethics and editorial writing.
Expertise:
- Diversity and Media
- Ethics, Journalism
- Newspapers