Malcolm Moran

Bachelor's degree: Fordham University (1975)

Malcolm Moran brings nearly 30 years of experience as an award-winning and respected sports journalist at USA Today, The New York Times, Newsday and the Chicago Tribune to his position as the inaugural Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society.

In his distinguished and diversified career as a sports journalist, Moran has covered 26 bowl games with national championship implications, 26 men’s basketball Final Fours, 16 World Series, 11 Super Bowls, several NCAA conventions and two Olympic Games.

In 2007, Moran was as the print journalism winner of the annual Curt Gowdy Media Award presented by the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Moran launched his daily newspaper career as a sports reporter at Newsday in 1977, where he covered high school, college and professional sports. He worked at The New York Times from 1979 to 1998 as a reporter and columnist before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1998, where he worked as the Notre Dame football beat reporter while also writing commentaries and providing event and feature coverage on professional and college sports.
In 2000, he moved to USA Today where, in addition to his coverage of college basketball and football, he wrote feature articles on professional and college sports.

In addition to teaching and working with journalism professionals, Moran serves as director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, housed in the College of Communications and its Department of Journalism.

The Center, founded in 2003, explores issues and trends in sports journalism through instruction, programming and research. Four full-semester core courses (sports writing; sports broadcasting; sports information and management; and sports, media and society) comprise the undergraduate classroom portion.

Complementary sponsored programming for the Center includes on-campus lectures, panels and workshops on journalism and the role of sports in society. The Center also conducts regular studies and surveys about trends in sports journalism.

In the future, the Center will issue periodic reports that measure and track trends in hiring, staffing and coverage philosophies of media enterprises as well as media coverage of off-field sports issues.

Malcolm Moran Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society

Podcast
Discussing sports journalism and society with Penn State President Graham Spanier on "To the Best of My Knowledge."