Paul Ingrassia

Paul Ingrassia (born c. 1950) is Managing Editor for Reuters, a division of Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York City.

Career

Prior to his appointment as Managing Editor of Reuters in December 2012, Mr. Ingrassia was Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Thomson Reuters, where he directed content creation across regions and specialty beats, in text and multimedia. He was appointed Deputy Editor-in-Chief in April 2011.^[1]

In December 2007, Mr. Ingrassia completed a 31-year career at The Wall Street Journal and its parent company, Dow Jones, where he served as a reporter, editor and executive.^[2] He began his news career at the former Lindsay-Schaub Newspaper group in Decatur, Illinois in 1973 and in 1977 he moved to The Wall Street Journal in Chicago.^[3] Over the years he has taught as an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and lectured at the business schools at Columbia and the University of Michigan. From 1998 to 2006 Mr. Ingrassia served as president of Dow Jones Newswires, responsible for $225 million of annual revenue and nearly 800 journalists worldwide. In 2006-2007 he served as the company's vice president for news strategy.^[4]

Ingrassia was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting along with Joseph B. White of The Wall Street Journal, for their often exclusive coverage of the management turmoil at General Motors. They also received the Gerald Loeb Award that year in the deadline/beat writing category for the same coverage. The following year, Ingrassia and White wrote Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry.^[5] Ingrassia is also the author of Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars^[6] and Crash Course: the American Automobile Industry's Road from Glory to Disaster.^[7]

Mr. Ingrassia is a regular commentator on CNBC, and has written regularly for the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal. In recent years, his work has also appeared in the Nihon Keizei Shimbun of Japan, Newsweek, Institutional Investor, and other publications. His broadcast appearances include Meet the Press, The PBS Newshour, The Daily Show, Squawk Box, Morning Joe, the Tavis Smiley Show, various National Public Radio shows and other programs.

Climate Change Controversy

Critics see Ingrassia as a denier of the science of climate change and accuse him of having materially altered Reuters' coverage of climate change—reducing total number of climate related stories by almost 50%, and altering content of articles, according to Media Matters. However, the Media Matters article received widespread criticism for taking Ingrassia's comments out of context and for omitting key facts on the decrease in climate change coverage among the vast majority of news outlets.

First, Ingrassia did not say that he was a "denier" of the science of climate change, but rather, that he wanted to see more evidence that humans were responsible for climate change. Second, there is no evidence to suggest that Ingrassia altered the content of any articles. Rather, an updated version of the Media Matters article notes that, since Ingrassia joined, anonymous Reuters reporters said that they felt pressure to add "balance" to climate change stories. Third, the Media Matters article failed to note that, beginning as early as 2009, most other news organizations began reducing their climate change coverage as well, including the New York Times and The Guardian. For example, Environment & Energy Publishing reduced its coverage of climate change by 38% beginning in 2009. More strikingly, a study by The Daily Climate found that in 2011, overall news of climate change had reduced by 42% since its peak in 2009. These studies quite clearly suggest that Reuters' reduction in climate change coverage did not result from any bias, but instead, the reduction was consistent with an industry-wide trend. However, the nearly 50% drop in coverage since Ingrassia took over has been in slightly less than 2 years, when compared to 5 years with the other studies.

Early Life

Ingrassia, who was born in Laurel, MS, has journalism degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (bachelor's, 1972) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (master's).

References

• Columbia University School of Journalism, Faculty biographies Retrieved: 2010-06-30.

• Amazon author biography Retrieved: 2010-06-30.