Research Bio
Dean Michael D. Bolden is the former CEO and Executive Director of the American Press Institute (API), a journalism support organization founded in 1946 to help journalists remain current with the skills and training they need to be effective in a changing media landscape. He has had a distinguished career that has taken him from the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a copy editor and reporter to the University of California, Berkeley.
Dean Bolden has worked as a local reporter and national editor, a teacher and nonprofit leader. For more than 15 years, he has helped media leaders navigate the complexity of social and economic disruptions. He has accomplished this work at the intersection of media, entrepreneurship, and civic engagement in senior roles at The Washington Post (where he helped merge the digital and print newsrooms), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Stanford University, the San Francisco Chronicle, and API (where his research focused on the evolving habits of news consumers, the digital transformation of news organizations and community-engaged journalism).
He is the Dean of the School of Journalism and a Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where he is preparing the next generation of journalists to meet the evolving information needs of humanity.
Dean Bolden's work has appeared in Bay Windows, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Miami Herald, the Knight Ridder News Service, The Washington Post, and other publications, while he has appeared on radio and television, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation." He frequently lectures and presents to journalism and philanthropic organizations about the need for community-engaged journalism to meet the needs of diverse democratic communities.
His past appearances have included speeches and presentations to the Asian American Journalists Association, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, the California Journalism Philanthropy Summit, the Colorado Press Association, the Global Editors Network (Barcelona, Paris and Lisbon), iMEdD International Journalism Week (Athens, Greece), the Iowa Newspaper Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the New England Newspapers Association, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, the International Symposium on Journalism, the Lenfest Local News Summit, the Online News Association, and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists.
Dean Bolden is a graduate of the University of Alabama and Stanford University, where his thesis focused on the social and political significance of Cuba's Black patron saint, Our Lady of El Cobre, in a country that was mandated an atheistic state for decades. He is the former treasurer of the board of the Student Press Law Center and a past member of the boards of the Society of Professional Journalists Foundation and EdSource. He is a member of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Online News Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Press Club, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, Sigma Tau Delta, and the Society of Professional Journalists.
Research Expertise and Interest
community-engaged journalism, media transformation, press freedom, equity in journalism, local news reporting