Director of Wallace House

Lynette Clemetson is the Charles R. Eisendrath Director of Wallace House, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists at the University of Michigan. She is a 2010 Knight-Wallace alum and came to the university from National Public Radio where she was Senior Director of Strategy and Content Initiatives, developing and guiding projects across broadcast, digital and events. Her career in journalism spans newspapers, magazines and audio across a range of platforms. As a reporter, she was a Washington-based correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek, writing about politics, social issues and demographic change. Prior to her domestic correspondent work, she was an international correspondent for Newsweek based in Hong Kong, where she covered the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. She moved into digital strategy and leadership in 2008 as the founding managing editor of the website TheRoot.com, launched for The Washington Post Company with Henry Louis Gates Jr.. She is also the former Director of Content Strategy at Pew Center on the States.

Lynette has a passionate interest in press freedom issues. She serves on the board of Forbidden Stories, an award-winning news organization dedicated to publishing the work of journalists who have been threatened, jailed or killed. Additionally, she is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. She serves on the advisory boards for PBS FRONTLINE and the Robin Toner Prizes for Political Reporting at Syracuse University and on the education committee of The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

clemetly@umich.edu | @lclemetson