Tom is founder and president of the Banyan Project, which aims to strengthen democracy by pioneering a sustainable and scalable business model for Web journalism that serves the broad public of everyday citizens and engages their civic energy.

As a 2010-11 fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, Tom shaped the business plan for Banyan’s distinctive reader-owned co-op business model; with the the support of the National Cooperative Business Association he is now is the process of launching a pilot site in Haverhill, Mass.

Tom is an editor and entrepreneur with a passion for strengthening journalism and democracy. As an editor he has supervised reporting that has won an array of major

Selected Publications and Speeches -- Journalism and Democracy


      Might the New Web Journalism Model be Neither For-Profit nor Nonprofit?

               Concluding essay in series of 3 for Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, December 2011

               No. 1: Taking Stock of the State of Web Journalism

               No. 2: Layoffs and Cutbacks Lead to a New World of News Deserts


      Changing the Game for the Future of Journalism

               Game-Changer Award acceptance speech, WeMedia Conference, University of Miami, March 2010


      Editors -- The Best Is Yet to Come?

               Essay, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, December 2008

               

      Needed: More Excellence in Journalism
               Essay published by Citmedia.org, December 2006

      Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?
               Keynote address, Media Giraffe Conference on the future of journalism, July 2006

      How Corporate Personhood Threatens Democracy
               Cover essay, UU World, May/June 2003

Selected Publications and Speeches -- Other Topics


     Sitting Between the Extremes: Why a Journalist Writes Haiku
               Essay, UU World, Fall 2007
               
    Improvisational Faith: Jazz and Unitarian Universalist Theology
               Cover article, UU World, September/October 2003





journalism awards including the Pulitzer Prize; as an entrepreneur he has been the founding publisher of two print magazines and three Web publications in addition to Banyan. His writings and speeches on strengthening democracy and on journalism have won a respectful following.


Positions Tom has held include national correspondent, national editor, and associate managing editor for project reporting at The Chicago Tribune; night national editor of The New York Times, and managing editor of The Kansas City Times. He later served for a decade as the editor and publisher of UU World, the national magazine of the Unitarian Universalist religious denomination, then as a consulting editor for the Center for public Integrity.  See his full resume.


Tom grew up in Kansas City and attended Williams College. He has taught in the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and conducted seminars at several journalism schools. In 2006 he was a Resident Fellow at Harvard Divinity School, where did research on power and the conscience. 



Photo: John S. Mercer

Contact:  tom@tomstites.com