Mississippi Today CEO Mary Margaret White will join 19 other Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program fellows at the Columbia Journalism School in New York City for the 2021-2022 academic year.

The program is designed to train leaders of the world’s most respected news organizations and promising media start-ups to lead innovation and solve strategic business challenges in a time of rapid transformation, uncertainty and opportunity. White joins the 2021 class among leaders from NPR, The New York Times, Vox Media and more.

“The journalism industry is under threat — politically, culturally and economically,” said Director Corey Ford. “Now, more than ever, we need leaders who can guide journalism to a robust and sustainable future. We believe that these fellows will be those leaders.”

White will use the 21-week program to launch and implement a project focused on financial resilience for Deep South newsrooms.

“Mississippi Today has become a leader in the nonprofit news space, but we still have so much to learn,” White said. “As a part of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program, I intend to sharpen my business management skills and focus my energy on building a strategy for sustainable funding of mission-driven journalism. I’m grateful to the American Journalism Project for a generous scholarship that allows me to pursue this opportunity, one where I’ll have the chance to learn from a select class of the nation’s top executives in both legacy media and digital publishing.”

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