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Photograph of Margot Susca

Margot Susca Assistant Professor School of Communication

Degrees
Ph.D. Mass Communication, Florida State University

M.S. Journalism, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
B.A. Journalism and Political Science, UMass Amherst

Bio
Margot Susca (Ph.D., Florida State University) is an assistant professor in the journalism division whose work operates at the intersection of investigative journalism and critical communications research, specifically focused on corporate media ownership and democracy and guided by the principles of the political economy of media. Her local newspaper experience informs her work as a scholar, teacher, and mentor.

Dr. Susca worked as a reporter in Connecticut and Florida, where the Society of Professional Journalists recognized her investigative reporting on high school graduation rates. Dr. Susca teaches courses in reporting, mass media and society, research design, censorship, and journalism ethics. Prior to joining American University in 2013, Dr. Susca taught as an adjunct faculty member at Florida A&M University and Florida State University, where she earned a doctorate in mass communications. Dr. Susca is a 2002 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she studied the fundamentals of urban reporting, feature writing, and breaking news in the months after the September 11 attacks, which she covered from Lower Manhattan and the South Bronx.

Since 2016, Dr. Susca has worked as an associate editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit newsroom founded and run by Charles Lewis. In that role, she mentors college students and recent graduates in reporting techniques. In Fall 2019, she was chosen as a Maynard 200 fellowship mentor in the Storytelling/Investigative Reporting track, helping a district newsroom editor with projects on both Covid-19 and Alzheimer's impacts on the city's Black communities. As a media and communications expert, in 2016, Dr. Susca took a role as an assessor with the International Fact Check Network, examining methodology, ownership, staffing, and sourcing of fact check sites wishing to become verified signatories. The IFCN was nominated in 2021 for a Nobel Peace Prize.
See Also
"The War on Leakers" in The New Republic
"The Fear of Fake News" Wisconsin Public Radio
"Destroyer of Newspapers" Wisconsin Public Radio
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Summer 2020

  • COMM-755 Research Design in Comm

Fall 2020

  • COMM-320 Reporting

Spring 2021

  • COMM-320 Reporting

  • COMM-409 Journalism Ethics