Monica R. Richardson is Vice President of Local News for McClatchy overseeing content operations for the company’s largest news markets — the Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee, Kansas City Star, Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

She is charged with working with the executive editors of these newsrooms to develop strategies that emphasize their position as preeminent local media brands, ensuring that they achieve the highest ambitions of local journalism, and extend their record of audience growth. She also oversees a team focused on talent, culture and training across McClatchy’s newsrooms.

Before this role, Richardson served as the Pulitzer-prize-winning Executive Editor of the Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald, and McClatchy’s Regional Florida Editor. She made history when she became the first Black editor in the Herald’s 118-year history. Before joining the Herald, she spent 15 years at the award-winning Atlanta Journal-Constitution as a senior leader and news editor. She worked her way up from content editor and reporter (covering education, state and local government, and politics) at news organizations in Florida, Kentucky and Virginia.

She’s been a professional journalist for more than 30 years, but her love for the craft started when she was in middle and high school as a participant in the Dow Jones High School journalism workshops. She believes being a journalist is not a job, but a calling of purpose. She has dedicated her career to motivating, mentoring, and elevating entry- and mid-career journalists as well as aspiring leaders, editors, journalists of color, and women in leadership from various industries. She is a passionate advocate for action-oriented initiatives that promote DEI in newsrooms and news coverage, believing that we fail when we don’t adequately tell the stories that capture the experiences of women, people of color and other marginalized communities.

In addition to the Pulitzer and serving as a past Pulitzer juror, she holds a Congressional Record of Honor and has been recognized as one of South Florida’s most influential African Americans for her work in the journalism industry. Most recently she received the prestigious Ida B. Wells Award from the National Association of Black Journalists. She continues to give back through service on the journalism industry and local nonprofit community organization boards and associations. Monica and her daughter live in Miami.