Edward Wasserman is professor of journalism and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Before coming to Berkeley in January 2013 he was for 10 years the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation professor of journalism ethics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. He writes and speaks widely on matters related to media rights and wrongs, technological change, and media ownership and control. His academic specialties include plagiarism, source relations, confidentiality and conflict of interest.
From 2001 to 2016 he wrote a biweekly column on the media that was distributed nationally by the McClatchy-Tribune News Service. He was a member of the executive board of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and serves on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Media Ethics. He has spoken to professional and academic groups throughout the United States and in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Great Britain, India, the Netherlands, Sweden, Qatar, and China.
Wasserman joined W&L in 2003 after a career in journalism that began in 1972. He worked for news organizations in Maryland, Wyoming, Florida, and New York. Among other positions, he was CEO and editor in chief of American Lawyer Media’s Miami-based Daily Business Review newspaper chain, executive business editor of The Miami Herald, city editor of The Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, and editorial director of Primedia’s 140-publication Media Central division in New York.
Wasserman received a B.A. cum laude in politics and economics from Yale, a license in philosophy from the University of Paris I, and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, where he studied media politics and economics.