July 24, 2024

The Board of Directors of the Institute for Nonprofit News appointed Graciela Mochkofsky, dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, to join the board at its last meeting. Mochkofsky has said that she looks forward to bringing “the perspective of someone who is training the next generation of journalists and has both a local and a global perspective of the industry.” 

She joins a group of directors that includes representatives elected from INN’s 450 member newsrooms as well as outside experts who bring experience to help INN fulfill its mission of expanding access to deeply reported and fact-checked news in communities across North America.

“We are delighted that Graciela accepted our invitation to join INN’s board,” said board chair Marcia Parker, vice president, philanthropic partnerships at the New York Times. “The first woman of color to lead the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the former director of CUNY’s Center for Community Media, Graciela is known for her deep commitment to nurturing the next generation of journalists, especially journalists of color and community media who serve immigrants and communities of color.”

Parker noted that Mochkofsky brings a wealth of experience as an award-winning journalist, author, teacher, university administrator, fundraiser and as a board member of Rebuild Local News – a national coalition (that includes INN) working on public policy solutions to counter the collapse of local news and strengthen communities. 

Mochkofsky first joined the Newmark J-School in 2016 to launch the nation’s first bilingual master’s journalism program. Three years later, she began leading the school’s Center for Community Media, where she oversaw a groundbreaking project that in four years helped infuse nearly $50 million of city funds into NYC community media. In early 2024, a little more than a year into serving as dean, Mochkofsky secured a $10 million gift from Craig Newmark Philanthropies that will enable the school to begin offering free tuition to 50% of its students next year. She also launched a campaign to raise additional funds so the school can become tuition-free for all of its students, in perpetuity.

A native of Argentina, Mochkofsky is also an active journalist. She is currently a contributing writer for The New Yorker, authoring a column on Latino and Latin American issues. She has worked as a political correspondent with La Nación in Argentina, as a columnist and blogger for El País in Spain, and as a contributor to publications in Latin America, Europe, and the U.S., including The California Sunday Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review.

Mochkofsky is the author of seven books of nonfiction, most of them in Spanish, including, in English, The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land, published in 2022 by Knopf. She serves on the board of Radio Ambulante, Rebuild Local News, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. She is a winner of the 2018 Maria Moors Cabot Prize for outstanding reporting across Latin America and the Caribbean. In late 2023, City & State magazine named her one of the leaders making her mark on New York City.