Erika Hobbs joins the News Literacy Project as Chicago program manager

Hobbs brings a wealth of media, management and teaching experience to NLP. She was an award-winning reporter for more than a decade, including five years covering education at the Orlando Sentinel, and has been an adjunct instructor in writing and journalism at four colleges and universities — most recently at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also held various communications roles.

Hobbs has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has nearly completed her coursework toward a doctorate in communications, focusing on the representation of students of color in education coverage and the redefinition of news in a digital age.

Hobbs said that she looks forward to furthering a mission that “works to counter the narrative that news is useless, dead or irrelevant in a digital age and that cultivates a new way of understanding how digital technology is reshaping news, how to make it a more powerful tool than ever, and how to filter the ‘noise’ on the Internet from the truth — or the truth as best as it can be told.” Another goal, she said, is “to nurture aspiring writers or interested individuals to participate in the news process, whether through craft, increased readership, criticism or scholarship.”

She succeeds Mary Owen, who is leaving after three years to pursue other interests.