Margot Susca Assistant Professor Journalism
- Degrees
- Ph.D. Mass Communication, Florida State University
M.S. Journalism, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
B.A. Journalism and Political Science, UMass Amherst - Favorite Spot on Campus
- The Woods-Brown Amphitheater
- Bio
-
Margot Susca is the School of Communication’s inaugural assistant professor of Journalism, Accountability, and Democracy. Combining critical political economy and investigative reporting techniques, Dr. Susca researches media ownership, emerging business models, philanthropic funding and their impacts on civic engagement and democracy. In January 2024, the University of Illinois Press published her first book, Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy. Publishers Weekly called it a “damning debut.”
Her academic and professional experiences inform her work as a mentor, scholar, and teacher. Dr. Susca has worked as a reporter in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Florida, and she brings those experiences to the classroom providing a professional vantage point to complement her scholarly expertise. Between 2016 and 2023 served as associate editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit newsroom on campus founded by Charles Lewis. She is a 2002 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she covered the September 11 attacks and their aftermath. On campus, Dr. Susca teaches courses on democracy and media, journalism ethics, mass media and society, reporting, and research design. She advises and mentors master's and doctoral students in the Journalism and Communication Studies divisions of SOC and as a Complex Problems fellow works with first-year undergraduate students from every major at the University. In 2022, she won American University’s Outstanding Teaching Award given annually to a full-time faculty member in a tenure line position.
Dr. Susca is a frequent expert on news programs and podcasts discussing journalism and society, the business of media, and private investment funds. She ran the weekend Journalism and Digital Storytelling master's program from 2015 to 2020. Off campus, she has served as a Maynard 200 fellowship mentor in the Storytelling/Investigative Reporting track and works with the International Fact Check Network.
- See Also
- Publishers Weekly Review of "Hedged"
- ‘The Investment Firms Leave Behind a Barren Wasteland’ in POLITICO
- Factually! with Adam Conover: How Capitalism Murdered Journalism with Margot Susca
- WNYC's On The Media: "Journalism's Private Investment Era"
- "The War on Leakers" in The New Republic
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Spring 2024
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COMM-462 Journalism Capstone
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COMM-898 Doctoral Continuing Enrollment
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CORE-105 Complex Problems Seminar: Democracy Along the Red Line
Fall 2024
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COMM-200 Writing for Communication
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COMM-320 Reporting
AU Experts
Area of Expertise
Corporate media ownership including private equity and hedge funds in journalism; media economics; newspapers and democracy; media and society including media effects.
Additional Information
Margot Susca (Ph.D., Florida State University) is an assistant professor in the journalism division whose work operates at the intersection of investigative journalism and critical communications research. Dr. Susca's first book, an investigation of private investment funds in the U.S. newspaper industry, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press.
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.