Geneva Overholser

Who is Geneva Overholser?

Geneva Overholser is professor and director of the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She was the ombudsman for The Washington Post from 1995 to 1998 and served as a columnist for the paper. From 1989 to 1997, she was a board member of the Pulitzer Prizes at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and served as the chair in her final year.

She was editor of the The Des Moines Register newspaper from 1988 to 1995, where she led the paper to win a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service in 1991. She also earned the award of Gannett Editor of the Year in 1990.

Overholser held the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Reporting in the Washington bureau of the University of Missouri School of Journalism from 2000 to 2008.

She is a board member of the Committee of Concerned Journalists and the Academy of American Poets, and has also been a board member of the Knight fellowships at Stanford University and served as a member of the editorial board of The New York Times from 1985 to 1988.