Dean’s Corner
Recent Dean's Corner Posts
- Why Journalism Will Thrive
This is actually a fascinating time of opportunity, a chance for you and your generation to re-imagine journalism, to put your own stamp, your own ideas, on our venerable profession. Already, there is an astonishing array of experimentation and change going on in journalism today, some of it at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Read more »
- Reporting on a New Journalistic Ecosystem
- Thriving in Tough Times
- More »
About Dean Shepard
Stephen B. Shepard is the founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at The City University of New York. The school, which opened in September 2006, offers an innovative three-semester MA degree in journalism.
From 1984 to 2005, Mr. Shepard was editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek, the largest business magazine in the world. During his tenure, BusinessWeek won many major journalism awards, including five National Magazine Awards (two for General Excellence), 11 Overseas Press Club Awards and four Gerald Loeb Awards.
BusinessWeek was a National Magazine Award finalist 23 times on Mr. Shepard’s watch— nine of those for General Excellence. Additionally, the magazine’s worldwide circulation grew 40 percent, to 1.2 million under Mr. Shepard’s editorial stewardship.
Mr. Shepard began his journalistic career in 1963 as an editorial trainee at The McGraw-Hill Companies, BusinessWeek’s parent. He joined the magazine in 1966, serving in various domestic and international posts for ten years. He was also an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism from 1971 to 1976, and co-founder and first director of the school’s prestigious Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economic and Business Journalism.
Mr. Shepard left BusinessWeek in 1976 for Newsweek, where he was senior editor for national affairs. In 1981, he became editor of Saturday Review. He returned to BusinessWeek as executive editor in 1982 and became editor-in-chief in 1984.
In 1999, Mr. Shepard was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame and received the Gerald M. Loeb Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award for business journalism. In 2000, he received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award, the magazine publishing industry’s highest honor. And in 2003, he won the President’s Award from the Overseas Press Club. Mr. Shepard was president of the American Society of Magazine Editors from 1992 to 1994.
He served on the Board of Visitors at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism from 1998 to 2004. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Overseas Press Club, and the Century Association.
A native New Yorker, Mr. Shepard graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the City College of New York and a master’s degree in engineering from Columbia University. He and his wife, Lynn Povich, have two adult children, Sarah and Ned.
