Columbia Center for Oral History Portal > Oral history interview with Susan R. King, 2013Biographical NoteDean and John Thomas Kerr Distinguished Professor, School of Media and Journalism at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Vice President for External Affairs, Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Scope and ContentsSusan King begins by discussing her childhood and education; network news journalism career in the 1970s-80s at CBS, ABC and NBC; and positions as the Executive Director of the Family and Medical Leave Commission of the U.S. Department of Labor and as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HUD (United States Department of Housing and Urban Development) under the (Bill) Clinton administration. King then discusses her role as Vice President for External Affairs at the Carnegie Corporation of New York: coming to work at the Carnegie Corporation in 1999; revitalizing the Carnegie Corporation’s internal publications; her thoughts on Vartan Gregorian and on changes made to the Carnegie Corporation under his tenure as President; the Carnegie-Knight News21 project, and her thoughts on journalism education and the future of the journalism field. King further discusses her role and responsibilities at the Carnegie Corporation: working with Vartan Gregorian, the Carnegie publications Carnegie Quarterly, Carnegie Review, and Carnegie Results, the Carnegie Corporation’s increasing reliance on commissions and consulting firms during her tenure, the Carnegie Corporation’s reaction to the September 11th attacks, and the Islam Initiative and Gregorian’s book, Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith. Finally, King discusses topics including her experience as a woman in journalism and dealing with age and appearance-based discrimination in the industry; spearheading an initiative to combat sweatshop exploitation of workers during her tenure with the U.S. Department of Labor; her involvement with inter-foundation partnerships, including organizing a meeting of New York’s major charitable foundations to coordinate relief fundraising in the weeks following September 11th; and Columbia University’s role in spearheading the Carnegie-Knight News21 journalism education initiative.
SubjectsAccess ConditionsCopyright by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2016. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York hold a non-exclusive license to enable library activities.
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