Thought Leader: Michele McLellan

Michele McLellan is a journalist and consultant who helps news organizations and journalism training organizations adapt in a rapidly changing new media environment.

Michele is a 2009-10 fellow at the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Her project, "Civic Engagement 2.0" explores how people are using digital media to foster community debate and action as well as the implications of new practices for people who practice journalism.

Other projects include developing leadership and project management training and writing a Leadership 3.0 blog for the Knight Digital Media Center, and coaching foundation-funded community news start ups as a consultant to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

From 2003 to 2007, she directed Tomorrow's Workforce, a $2.5 million Knight Foundation project that demonstrated the link between strategic newsroom training, newsroom culture, and a news organization's ability to adapt and innovate.

She worked for more than 25 years as an editor and manager for newspapers, most recently at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon.

A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2001-2002, McLellan has taught journalism and journalism ethics nationally and internationally, developed online courses for News University at The Poynter Institute, and is an author of two books, The Newspaper Credibility Handbook and, with Tim Porter, News, Improved: How America's Newsrooms Are Learning to Change. She has been invited to make presentations at the conventions of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press Managing Editors. She has been an Ethics Fellow and guest faculty member in leadership at The Poynter Institute.

Michele's recent work and related links: