Elizabeth Donald has been a journalist for more than 25 years. In that time she has covered nearly every beat, with an emphasis on city and county government, crime and courts, features, business profiles, education and watchdog investigation, mostly for daily newspapers before becoming a full-time freelancer in 2018.
Donald is a frequent guest lecturer on the practical applications of journalism ethics and the changing nature of newspapers in the 21st century. She was an initial recipient of the Terry Harper Fellowship and has won multiple awards for journalism and fiction writing. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists’ national ethics commission, and was on the team that rewrote the SPJ Ethics Code in 2014.
In 2018, Elizabeth accepted a teaching assistantship at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She has completed a masters in media studies, with a research emphasis on the practical applications of journalism ethics and the depictions of journalists in television and film in the light of ethical behavior. She then completed a masters in fine arts with an emphasis in creative writing, and now teaches at several St. Louis-area college on the subjects of journalism, English composition and creative writing.
She serves as the president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists, freelances as a journalist, essayist, editor and photographer, and is also the author of several award-winning fiction novels. She manages the Literary Underworld author cooperative and the Eville Writers writing group, as well as the St. Andrew’s Book Fair. In her spare time, she has no spare time.
To read some of Elizabeth’s more recent nonfiction work, check out her online portfolio at Contently, her photography portfolio and her essays on Medium. References can be provided upon request.