Tech journalist and entrepreneur Julia Angwin is joining the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School as the founding director of a new initiative focused on independent media.
The new initiative will conduct and host research into the emerging independent media landscape, with a focus on mapping the new information terrain that shapes public discourse, the evolution of standards and practices in reporting the news, and the role that independent media plays in safeguarding democracy.
Through convenings and public events, the initiative plans to establish itself as the center for understanding the diverse set of content creators – from Substackers to YouTubers – who increasingly provide civic information to the public.
For the past two years, Angwin has been a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, where she has researched how creators build trust with their audiences.
In December 2024, she published “The Future of Trustworthy Information: Learning from Online Content Creators.” She is a winner and two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for her work at The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica.
She founded the nonprofit newsroom The Markup in 2018 and the newsroom Proof News in 2024.
She is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance” (Times Books, 2014) and “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America” (Random House, March 2009).
