Financial journalist and editorial entrepreneur Rob Cox has been named the 2017 James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professor of Journalism at SUNY New Paltz.
Cox will join the faculty in the spring of 2017 to teach an upper-level journalism seminar called “Financial Journalism and the Business of Media.”
Cox is the global editor of Reuters Breakingviews, the financial commentary division of Thomson Reuters. He helped found that publication in 2000 and guide it through its expansion into the United States in 2004 and its acquisition by Thomson Reuters in 2009.
He is a frequent contributor to CNBC and has written opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, Newsweek, USA Today and other publications.
A resident of Newtown, Conn., Cox also helped found Sandy Hook Promise, an organization dedicated to preventing gun violence that formed in the wake of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Cox visited New Paltz during the fall 2015 semester to speak with psychology, journalism and disaster mental health students about his career and his experiences working with this group.
As the 2017 Ottaway Visiting Professor, Cox will share ideas about journalism and the media with students, faculty, staff and community members at public lectures and events, in addition to leading the “Financial Journalism and the Business of Media” seminar.
The first of these will be an introductory Q & A with President Donald P. Christian, Monday, Feb. 6 at 6 p.m. in the Honors Center.
About the James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professorship
The James H. Ottaway Sr. Visiting Professorship, SUNY New Paltz’s only endowed professorship, is named for the founder of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., now the Dow Jones Local Media Group, which operates print and online community media franchises in seven states. The flagship newspaper of the chain is the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y.
Fifteen well-known journalists have preceded Cox as Ottaway professors. Four have been Pulitzer Prize winners, including Renée C. Byer, a photographer for The Sacramento Bee; former New York Times investigative reporter and columnist Sydney Schanberg; Bernard Stein, an editorial writer with The Riverdale Press in the Bronx; and John Darnton, a former Times foreign correspondent.
Other past Ottaway professors were author and journalist Eyal Press; multimedia journalist and author Alissa Quart; science journalist and author Sonia Shah; NPR Foreign Correspondent Deborah Amos; New York Times investigative reporter Andrew Lehren; award-winning broadcast journalist and media consultant John Larson; Ann Cooper, a former public radio reporter who headed the Committee to Protect Journalists; Byron E. Calame, a longtime Wall Street Journal editor and reporter who has served as The New York Times’ public editor; Roger Kahn, the author of 20 books and one of America’s foremost literary journalists; Trudy Lieberman, one of America’s best consumer reporters; and Martin Gottlieb, the global edition editor of The New York Times.
