Press Criticism

Kevin M. Lerner serves as an Assistant Professor of Journalism at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, and is the author of Provoking the Press: (MORE) Magazine and the Crisis of Confidence in American Journalism, published by The University of Missouri Press.

He teaches American press history, media law, narrative journalism, news editing, and reporting and writing integrating contemporary technology and social media tools. He edits the peer-reviewed scholarly Journal of Magazine Media, and is a past head of the Magazine Media Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He also serves on the executive committees of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies and the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. He has published work in the journals Journalism History and The Journal of Magazine and New Media Research, as well as peer-reviewed book chapters in edited volumes published by the University of Pennsylvania Press and Peter Lang.

He earned his doctorate in journalism and media studies from Rutgers University, where he completed a dissertation entitled “Gadfly to the Watchdogs: How The Journalism Review (MORE) Goaded the Mainstream Press Toward Self-Criticism in the 1970s,” chronicling an influential journalism review and its role in countering anti-intellectualism in the American press.

Lerner served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of journalism at Marist College for 2009–2011, and an Affiliate Assistant Professor there from 2011–2014. Previously, he taught journalism at Seton Hall University and LaGuardia Community College of the City University of New York.

He has published journalism in The Columbia Journalism Review, Quill, The Washington Post, Slate, The New York Times, New York magazine, The Nieman Lab, and other publications. He worked at Architectural Record, where he served as the magazine’s first web editor and as the editor of the print magazine’s department for young architects.

Lerner specializes in American journalism history, press criticism, journalistic professionalism, including law and ethics, and journalism in higher education. He holds a Master of Science from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts in nonfiction writing from the University of Pennsylvania. He was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in St. Paul, MN and Arlington, TX.