Columnist Terry Mattingly Joins as Senior Fellow, Bolsters Journalism Program

NEW YORK CITY – The King’s College in New York City received a significant boost to its journalism education offerings today, announcing that Universal Syndicate columnist Terry Mattingly will join King’s in 2015-2016 as a Senior Fellow of Religion and Media.

“Through his highly regarded leadership over the years at The Washington Journalism Center and through his pioneering column at GetReligion.org, I can think of no more articulate voice speaking to place or religion in the public square than Professor Terry Mattingly,” said Gregory Alan Thornbury, the president of The King’s College.

Mattingly will assist the Phillips Journalism Institute at King’s as it rolls out its NYC Semester in Journalism starting in the Fall of 2015, which invites college students to spend a semester with a 6-credit internship at a newsroom in New York City while also taking foundational classes in journalism at King’s.

“This is not retirement,” Mattingly said. “It’s a realignment of my time now that I am moving into my 60s.” Mattingly will be based in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he will continue working as Universal’s nationally-syndicated “On Religion” columnist and as editor of the GetReligion.org blog, which critiques mainstream media coverage of religion news. He will teach part-time for the NYC Semester in Journalism program at The King’s College.

In 1994, Mattingly co-founded the Summer Institute of Journalism at the Council of Christian Colleges in Washington D.C., which eventually grew into the full-semester Washington Journalism Center. Over the past decade, WJC has offered mainstream journalism internships and a full semester of academic content to students from around the country.

Mattingly worked as a reporter at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, the Charlotte Observer and the Charlotte News. He is author of “Pop Goes Religion: Faith in Popular Culture.” He received a BA in history and journalism from Baylor University, an M.A. in Church-State Studies at Baylor and an M.S. in communications from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

The Phillips Journalism Institute at King’s is named after legendary New York Times reporter John McCandlish Phillips, who was a friend and mentor to many journalists before he passed away in April of 2013. The institute is led by Paul Glader, an award-winning former staff writer at The Wall Street Journal and Associate Professor of Journalism at King’s. “I’m pleased to have the erudite and visionary writer known as “tmatt” joining our efforts,” Glader said. “His two decades of experience leading off-campus journalism programs in Washington D.C. will provide a steady rudder to our NYC Semester in Journalism program. His keen insights and active mentorship will continue to help students pursuing careers in media.”

Guest speakers at King’s in the past year have included a metropolitan editor of The New York Times, the US editor of The Economist, an editor for Reuters, a writer for The Wall Street Journal editorial page, an online editor for The New York Daily News, a national writer for Religion News Service, a writer for World Magazine and a writer for The Blaze.

Students are welcome to apply for the 2015-2016 class of the NYC Semester in Journalism, which includes a 6-credit internship at a media outlet in New York City along with a select mix of courses on journalism and faith integration. Students from partner schools will be able to attend for a combined tuition and housing cost of $10,000, an incredible value in New York City.

Interested students, parents and faculty can visit www.phillipsjournalism.org or call the Phillips Journalism Institute director Paul Glader at 212-659-0742.