Jane Kirtley

Jane Kirtley (BSJ75, MSJ76) is a member of the Medill Hall of Achievement.

Kirtley is the Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. She also is Director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law.

She is also an affiliated faculty member at the University of Minnesota Law School and has held visiting professorships at Suffolk University and Notre Dame Law schools. She was a Fulbright Scholar teaching U.S. media law and media ethics at the University of Latvia’s Law Faculty in Riga during Spring 2016.

Kirtley has written friend-of-the-court briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as two books, many book chapters, and articles for scholarly journals and for the popular and professional press, including The New York Times, The Conversation, and the Guardian (UK).

Kirtley served as Executive Director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for 14 years. Before that, she practiced law in New York, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and was a reporter for newspapers in Indiana and Tennessee. She was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 2015 and is a long-time member of the board of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. Kirtley’s J.D. is from Vanderbilt University Law School.