Democracy on Deadline: The Future of Journalism and The New York Times in a Divided America

Kathleen Kingsbury leads the Opinion report for The New York Times, which she joined in 2017 as Deputy Editorial Page editor. For The Times, Kingsbury was a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for a series on guns and domestic violence and a 2025 finalist for a series on nuclear war, and she oversaw the paper’s Pulitzer-winning editorials on race and culture in 2019.

Before joining The Times, Kingsbury spent her career at the Boston Globe, rising to Managing Editor with a focus on digital. There she won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for “Service Not Included,” an 8-part series on low wages and the mistreatment of restaurant workers, and edited the Globe’s 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning commentary on race and education. Kingsbury grew up in Portland, Ore., studied at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and holds a graduate degree from the Columbia Journalism School.

In a conversation moderated by Meg Heckman, Associate Professor in the School of Journalism, this year’s Jack Thomas lecturer Kathleen “Katie” Kingsbury will speak on the future of journalism, and the critical role a free press plays in a divided America.

The Jack Thomas Lecture Series honors the extraordinary legacy of Jack Thomas, who as a reporter, columnist and editor at The Boston Globe believed journalism to be a force for good and inexorably tied to the well-being of communities served by fearless and engaged media. The lecture is a complement to the Tom Winship Scholar program in the School of Journalism, which provides support for first-generation, local Boston, and underrepresented students to ensure newsrooms reflect the communities they serve.