Nick Chiles Named Cox Institute’s Industry Fellow for 2020

Nick Chiles, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best-selling author, will be the 2020 Industry Fellow with the Grady College’s James M. Cox Jr. Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management and Leadership. 

Chiles joined the Cox Institute in August 2019 as its first writing coach and helped establish the Grady Writing Lab as a service to provide journalism students writing assistance outside of the traditional classroom. Chiles will continue to serve as the writing coach, and will expand his role through the Industry Fellowship to include faculty training, classroom lectures and service on the Cox Institute’s Board of Advisers. He will also be the keynote speaker at this year’s Spring Leadership Dinner honoring Grady’s Levin Leaders on March 4. 

“The opportunity to work with Grady’s emerging young journalists has been a rewarding experience,” Chiles said. “I’m looking forward to continuing those relationships and to work more with faculty as the Industry Fellow this year.”

Keith Herndon, director of the Cox Institute, described Chiles as an extremely talented journalist and writer who has made a significant impact on the lives of Grady’s students in a short time. 

“Nick Chiles believes deeply in the mission of journalism and he underscores for our students the need to report with integrity and to master the craft of writing,” Herndon said. “The Industry Fellow program is designed to facilitate connections between accomplished journalists and our students and we’re very excited to have Nick in this role at Grady.”

Over the course of his 33-year career, Chiles has distinguished himself as one of the nation’s foremost chroniclers of African-American life, culture and celebrity—both as a bestselling author and an award-winning journalist. He is the author or co-author of 14 books, including three New York Times bestsellers he wrote with R&B icon Bobby Brown, civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and gospel legend Kirk Franklin. He is the co-author with Atlanta attorney Robbin Shipp of the book Justice While Black: Helping African-American Families Navigate and Survive the Criminal Justice System, which was a finalist for a 2015 NAACP Image Award.

Chiles was a newspaper reporter, magazine writer, and magazine and website editor-in-chief during his years in journalism, winning nearly 20 major awards—including a 1992 Pulitzer Prize as part of a New York Newsday team. He has served as a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and taught at Princeton as a recipient of the prestigious Ferris Fellowship. He is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Atlanta.

Students can arrange writing lab sessions with Chiles by scheduling an appointment online at http://coxinstitute.grady.uga.edu/calendar/