Jack C. Doppelt

Professor, Medill School of Journalism
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University
j-doppelt@northwestern.edu
Additional biographical information

Jack Doppelt is a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, editor and publisher of On the Docket (a web site on the U.S. Supreme Court), the director of Medill's graduate global journalism program, and a faculty associate at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research.

At Medill, he has served as both Acting Dean and Associate Dean. He is co-author of Nonvoters: America's No Shows (Sage Publications, 1999), about why people don't vote. The book generated followup projects, funded by Pew Charitable Trusts, including "YVOTE 2000: Politics of a New Generation" and "YVOTE: A Dialogue with America's No-Shows," that seek to reconnect young Americans with the political process by creating a new model for providing news on issues they care about in a manner they can relate to.

The original project was a collaboration with WTTW-TV, Chicago's public television station, under a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to produce innovative programming about the politically and culturally disaffected. Doppelt is also co-author of The Journalism of Outrage: Investigative Reporting and Agenda Building in America, a book on investigative reporting and its influence on public policy. His expertise is media law and ethics, and the reporting of legal affairs.

As editor and publisher of On The Docket, he runs a student-driven Web site that offers the web's only comprehensive coverage of all pending U.S. Supreme Court cases. Doppelt has published numerous articles on libel, the media's influence on the criminal justice system and media coverage of the legal system, including the drug trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and a report for the Inspector General of the Department of Children and Family Services on "Confidentiality, the News Media and the Joseph Wallace Case."

He has consulted as an expert witness on media practices in a number of legal cases, including Jeffrey Masson v. New Yorker Magazine and Janet Malcolm. He has been a frequent guest host on WBEZ-FM, Chicago's public radio station, co-hosted a nine-part series on race relations that was simulcast on WBEZ-FM and WVON-AM, and coordinated a conference on "Guilt by Allegation: Lessons from the Cardinal Bernardin Case."

A graduate of Grinnell College and the University of Chicago Law School, Doppelt clerked for Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas J. Moran before becoming an investigative reporter and news producer. As an investigative journalist for the Better Government Association and WBBM-Newsradio in Chicago, he broke stories on court corruption, housing dangers, and governmental conflicts of interest.