Denise Clay has been a journalist for 20 years and an educator for the

last five. She is a columnist for the Philadelphia Public Record and

also works as a copy editor/proofreader/columnist for the Philadelphia

Sunday Sun, a black-owned weekly based in Philadelphia.

 

Clay has worked at a variety of news organizations including the

Philadelphia Tribune, the Bucks County Courier Times, the Elmira

Star-Gazette and the Reading Eagle Times. Clay was also an

anchor/reporter at WRTI-FM in Philadelphia and hosted a talk show

entitled “The Next Movement” on IMG2.com. She has also freelanced for

a variety of publications including Black America Web and blogs as The

Mad (political) Scientist. She is currently working on her masters

degree in journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she

also received her undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism.

 

From 2003-2005, Clay served as president of the Philadelphia

Association of Black Journalists, a founding chapter of the National

Association of Black Journalists. During her term, the organization

partnered with CN8-The Comcast Network and the Philadelphia Chapters

of the Asian American Journalists Association, the National

Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the National Lesbian and Gay

Journalists Association to produce the first of three mayoral debates

between former Mayor John Street and his challenger, Sam Katz. The

debate won CN8 and PABJ, a Mid Atlantic Emmy for their efforts. She

also served as a Deputy Regional Director for Region 2 (now Region 1)

of NABJ from 1998-2000.

 

But while she sees herself as a journalist first, Clay is also a

researcher who believes that the African American perspective must be

included in any academic look at the profession. With the help of

NABJ, Clay has done extensive research on journalists and objectivity,

minority employment in journalism and student journalism as part of

her master’s program. Last summer, Clay worked with Temple’s Media

Education Lab to produce a journalism curriculum that is currently in

use for an in-school program sponsored by the Corporation for Public

Broadcasting.