Keith Woods
 The Poynter Institute is a school
dedicated to teaching and inspiring journalists and
media leaders. It promotes excellence and integrity in
the practice of craft. Founded in 1975 by Nelson Poynter,
the concern of The Poynter Institute is academic
excellence and editorial independence. As a financially
independent, nonprofit organization, the Institute is
beholden to no interest except its own mission: to help
journalists do their best work. Poynter wants its
students to leave equipped with new tools and ideas to
handle the challenges of producing quality news reports,
programs and publications and with new ways of thinking
about the work that journalists do.
Woods is Dean of Faculty at St. Petersburg, Fla.-based
Poynter Institute, the nation’s leading professional
education center for working journalists.
He is a former sportswriter, news reporter, city editor,
editorial writer and columnist who worked his way
through those jobs in 16 years at the New Orleans
Times-Picayune. His writing won statewide and
national awards, including the 1994 National Headline
award he shared with colleagues for the 1993 series
Together Apart/The Myth of Race.
He joined Poynter in 1995, and for seven years led the
institute’s teaching on diversity and coverage of race
relations as part of the ethics faculty, then led the
reporting, writing and editing programs. In his time at Poynter, he has written columns and essays on topics
ranging from fatherhood to race relations to the
emerging South African press. He is the former editor of
Best Newspaper Writing, the annual collection of
prize-winning stories and photojournalism selected by
the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
He is a regular speaker at the Poynter-sponsored
National Writers Workshops each year and consults with
newspapers and television stations on matters of
diversity, race relations, writing and editing. He has
written extensively about how news organizations handle
race relations and diversity in the newsroom,
boardrooms, newspapers and broadcasts.
Woods, a 1980
journalism graduate of Dillard University, earned a
master’s degree in social welfare from Tulane
University.
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