MIT World Speakers

Ellen Hume

Ellen Hume is also the Founding Editor and Publisher of the New England Ethnic Newswire and the Founding Director of the Center on Media and Society, UMass Boston. As the founding Executive Director of PBS's Democracy Project, from 1996 to 1998, she developed special news programs that encouraged citizen involvement in public affairs. She oversaw PBS's 1996 and 1998 election coverage, creating PBS Debate Night, a nationally televised Congressional leadership debate, as well as local candidate debates on PBS stations across the country. She also created Follow the Money, PBS's weekly television and Web series on the role of money in American politics. At PBS, she developed "resource journalism," a multimedia approach to news coverage.

Hume has more than 30 years of experience as a reporter and analyst for American newspapers, magazines and television. She was a White House and political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal from 1983 to 1988, and a Washington-based national reporter with the Los Angeles Times from 1977 to 1983.

Hume was a Senior Research Fellow at UMass Boston (2003-2008). From 1988 to 1993, she served as Executive Director and Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.