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Photograph of Margot Susca

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Margot Susca Assistant Professor Journalism

Contact
Margot Susca
(202) 885-6462
SOC | Journalism
McKinley Building 325
Fall 2024 Office Hours
Thursdays 12:25 p.m. to 2:25 p.m. or by appointment
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

Favorite Spot on Campus
The Woods-Brown Amphitheater
Bio
Margot Susca is the School of Communication’s inaugural assistant professor of journalism, accountability, and democracy. A recognized expert in local news and private investment funds, Dr. Susca combines investigative reporting techniques with critical political economic methods to study journalism and civic engagement in U.S. democratic society. In January 2024, the University of Illinois Press published her first book, Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy. Publishers Weekly called it a “damning debut.” Her scholarship also has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Communication and Democracy; Critical Studies in Media Communication; and Communication, Culture, & Critique.

Her academic and professional experiences inform her work as a mentor, scholar, and teacher. Before earning a doctorate, Dr. Susca worked as a newspaper reporter in Connecticut and Florida, and she brings those experiences to the classroom providing a professional vantage point to complement her scholarly expertise. She mentors and teaches undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Communication and as a Complex Problems fellow works with first-years from every University major. In 2022, she won American University’s Outstanding Teaching Award given annually to a full-time faculty member in a tenure-line position.

Off campus, she was selected in 2019 as a Maynard Institute for Journalism Education fellowship mentor in the Storytelling/Investigative Reporting track, and she has worked as an assessor with Poynter's International Fact Check Network since 2016. Dr. Susca is a frequent guest and expert on news programs and podcasts around the world discussing journalism and society, the business of media, and corporate media ownership. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her daughter.
See Also
Publishers Weekly Review of "Hedged"
‘The Investment Firms Leave Behind a Barren Wasteland’ in POLITICO
Factually! with Adam Conover: How Capitalism Murdered Journalism with Margot Susca
WNYC's On The Media: "Journalism's Private Investment Era"
"The War on Leakers" in The New Republic
For the Media
To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Teaching

Fall 2024

  • COMM-200 Writing for Communication

  • COMM-320 Reporting

  • COMM-899 Doctoral Dissertation

Spring 2025

  • COMM-100 Understanding Media

  • CORE-105 Complex Problems Seminar: Democracy Along the Red Line

AU Experts

Area of Expertise

Corporate media ownership including private equity and hedge funds in journalism; media economics; newspapers and democracy; media and society including media effects.

Additional Information

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. Dr. Susca's first book, an investigation of private investment funds in the U.S. newspaper industry, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press.

For the Media

To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

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