Jack  Doppelt

Professor

Jack Doppelt is a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, publisher of Immigration Here & There (a web site reporting on immigration and diaspora populations), and of On the Docket (a web site on the U.S. Supreme Court) and and a faculty associate at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research. At Medill, he has served as both Acting Dean and Associate Dean, and as director of the Medill global journalism program for 11 years from its inception in 1996 until 2007. During the 2006-07 academic year, he served as visiting professor at Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) in France. Doppelt is co-author of Nonvoters: America's No Shows, about why people don't vote, and 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. He has argued in favor of a federal shield law and his piece for American
Prospect Online, "Say It Loud," argued in anticipation of the confirmation hearings for John Roberts that even Justice Scalia thinks that judicial
candidates should talk about their beliefs. During Election 2000, he did a series of pieces about the nonvoting phenomenon: "Quorum Call," "A Whisper Among the Disenfranchised," "Nader, Nonvoters and the Prism of Cynicism," and "The Summer's Convention Noise."

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 represented a group of journalists before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in a successful attempt to gain access to sealed court documents,
and 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.

Office

MTC 2-123

Phone

847-491-3955

Email

j-doppelt@northwestern.edu