Deborah Mathis
Template:Short description Deborah Myers Mathis (born 24 August 1953)<ref name="Welky 2015"/> is an American journalist and author. Her journalism career began as a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, a major newspaper in Arkansas. She also worked in television news in Little Rock and Washington. She was White House correspondent for the Gannett News Service. She returned to Arkansas and newspaper journalism at the Arkansas Gazette as an editorial columnist and associate editor.
Early life and education
Mathis was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on August 24, 1953, to Rev. Lloyd H. Myers and Rachel A. Helms Myers.<ref name="Welky 2015" /> She attended Gibbs Elementary, Rightsell Elementary, Westside Junior High, and Little Rock Central High School, where she was the first black and first female editor of the school's newspaper.<ref name="Welky 2015" /><ref name=honorees>Template:Cite web</ref>
Career
In 1973, Mathis became a reporter for Channel 11 Dateline News.<ref name=Jet>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Her career includes work as a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette (now merged into the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette), and TV stations KARK-Channel 4 and KATV-Channel 7.<ref name=honorees/> She was also a columnist for the Arkansas Gazette, and the first Black member of the Arkansas Gazette editorial board.<ref name="Turner 1990">Template:Cite news</ref> From 1993 to 2000 she was the White House correspondent for Gannett.<ref name=honorees/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2000, she was selected as a Fall Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to examine the role of race in press coverage in a case study.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Throughout the 1990s, Mathis was a fixture on TV news and current event talk shows, including America's Black Forum and Oprah, and was a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. She has also appeared as a commentator on NPR.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Mathis was an assistant professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.<ref name=honorees/> from 2003 to 2006.
Works
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Honors and awards
- 2003, inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame<ref name="Welky 2015">Template:Cite news</ref>
Personal life
Now a freelance writer, Mathis lives in McLean, Virginia. She has three adult children and three granddaughters. Template:Reflist
External links
- 1953 births
- Living people
- American women journalists
- African-American women writers
- African-American writers
- Writers from Little Rock, Arkansas
- People from Chevy Chase, Maryland
- 21st-century African-American people
- 21st-century African-American women
- 20th-century African-American people
- 20th-century African-American women
- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette people