Jay Rosen

Notable work and positions

PressThink - founder, writer, and editor
New York University journalism faculty - professor, 1986-2025; department chair, 1999-2005
Studio 20: Digital First - founder and director
Membership Puzzle Project - project director
Project on Public Life and the Press - director, 1993-1997

Biography

Jay Rosen is an American press critic, journalism educator, and theorist of public-service journalism. A native of Buffalo, New York, he briefly worked at the Buffalo Courier-Express before entering graduate study at New York University, where he studied media ecology with Neil Postman and earned a Ph.D. in media studies in 1986. That same year he joined NYU's journalism faculty. He received tenure in 1993, chaired the journalism department from 1999 to 2005, and later founded Studio 20, a graduate program focused on digital-first journalism and newsroom innovation. Rosen became one of the leading advocates and interpreters of civic or public journalism during the 1990s. His 1999 book, What Are Journalists For?, traced the movement's development and argued that journalism should strengthen democratic participation rather than treat the public as a passive audience. In 2003 he launched PressThink, an independent blog of press criticism, essays, interviews, and speeches about the changing role of journalism in the digital era. His later work has examined participatory reporting, membership-supported news, campaign coverage, journalistic objectivity, and the institutional habits of the political press. Rosen also led or helped develop projects including the Project on Public Life and the Press, NewAssignment.Net, Assignment Zero, OffTheBus, the Membership Puzzle Project, and the Citizens Agenda approach to election reporting. He retired from NYU in June 2025 after 39 years on the faculty, but said he would remain active in journalism through consulting, writing, speaking, and advocacy for a public-service press.

Notable work

• What Are Journalists For? Yale University Press, 1999 · Rosen's account and defense of the civic journalism movement, examining efforts to reconnect the press with citizens, public problem-solving, and democratic life.

• PressThink 2003-present · Rosen's long-running site of media criticism and journalism analysis, focused on the fate of the press in the digital era and the need to rethink professional conventions.

• Studio 20: Digital First Founded at NYU in 2009 · A project-based graduate program in which students worked with news organizations and digital startups on real-world problems involving editorial practice, technology, audience, products, and business models.

• Membership Puzzle Project Launched in 2017 · A research initiative on membership models for public-service journalism, audience participation, and sustainable relationships between news organizations and the communities they serve.

• The View from Nowhere and the Citizens Agenda · Two of Rosen's most influential critical frameworks: the first challenges a professional style that presents journalism as detached from any declared standpoint; the second urges election reporters to organize coverage around questions and priorities identified by citizens rather than around campaign strategy and polling alone.

Jay Rosen
Website: PressThink
NYU profile: Jay Rosen at NYU Arts & Science