Margaret Sullivan

Margaret M. Sullivan is an American journalist who is the former media columnist for The Washington Post. She was the fifth public editor of The New York Times and the first woman to hold the position. In that role, she reported directly to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. as the "readers' representative". She began her tenure on September 1, 2012, joining The New York Times from The Buffalo News, where she had been editor and vice-president. Her first column in The Washington Post ran on May 22, 2016. Biography Sullivan is a native of Lackawanna, New York. She is the daughter of John Sullivan, an attorney, and Elaine Saab Sullivan, a department store buyer and school teacher. She graduated from Nardin Academy in Buffalo, where she served as editor in chief of the school newspaper and captain of the basketball team. She is a graduate of Georgetown University. She also holds an M.S.J. from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Sullivan joined The Buffalo News in 1980 as a summer intern, becoming the paper's first female editor in 1999. In 1985, she married fellow Buffalo News journalist Charles Anzalone. Sullivan was appointed to the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2011. She has been a juror several times and has served as the chairwoman of the commentary jury in 2006. She has been elected a director of the American Society of News Editors and led its First Amendment committee. Sullivan is also the author of Ghosting the News: Local Journalism and the Crisis of American Democracy, which was published by Columbia Global Reports in 2020, and her memoir, Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life, which was published by St. Martin's Press in 2022. Career