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Report for America Report for America
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Alison Bethel

Profile

Alison Bethel is Vice President of Corps Excellence at Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project that places emerging journalists in newsrooms across America. Previously, she was Executive Director of the Society of Professional Journalists, where she was only the second woman and the first person of color to serve in that capacity in SPJ’s 110 years. Bethel has more than 35 years of experience as an award-winning reporter, bureau chief, senior editor and media trainer. She has worked in senior-level positions at The Boston Globe, The Detroit News, Legal Times and the Nassau Guardian in The Bahamas. From July 2016 to May 2017, Bethel served as a visiting professor of print and investigative journalism for the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media in Bangalore. She also spent a year in Accra, Ghana, for the Washington, D.C.-based International Center for Journalists, as a Knight International Journalism Fellow, helping Ghanaian journalists improve their reporting skills in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election. She also worked at The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times, Poughkeepsie Journal and the now-defunct State Times in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In 2009, she joined the International Press Institute, based in Vienna, Austria, as Deputy Director before becoming the Institute’s executive director a year later. She was the first woman and the first person of color in IPI’s 60-plus-year history to hold the position. The next year, she was named one of the 60 most influential Black women in Europe by the nonprofit Black Women in Europe. In 2018, she was awarded the President’s Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Bethel is a co-founder of the Media Institute of the Caribbean and is a board member for Journalism & Women’s Symposium, a member of Journal-ism’s Strategic Committee, a board member of Southern Foodways Alliance and an advisory board member for the International Center for Media Ethics. She holds membership with the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists

Celebrating Black History: Renaissance of the Black press

Alison Bethel|February 24, 2021February 24, 2021

On Canyon Crest Drive in Riverside, California, sits Jammin’ Bakery and Café, a sandwich shop that recently closed. It is one of the latest casualties of the coronavirus pandemic. Paulette Brown-Hinds, publisher of Black Voice News, was a regular at the bakery and on Valentine’s weekend hosted a virtual farewell for people who’d read from

For black journalists, a historic imperative and a unique burden

Alison Bethel|June 4, 2020June 4, 2020

Clad in riot gear, police officers on horseback sent tear gas wafting through the streets and fired rubber bullets into a line of marchers, pinging off buildings, cars and flesh. As I watched this all unfold, I marveled at how any journalist who looks like I do could walk among our people, protesting the murder

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