Rachele Kanigel is an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, where she advises Golden Gate [X]press, the student newspaper, and teaches Newswriting, Reporting, Introduction to Online Journalism, The Contemporary Magazine, Magazine Writing and Magazine Editing. She also writes, mostly about health and medicine, for magazines and websites.
She is executive director of the Institute for Education in International Media (ieiMedia), which sponsors summer multimedia study-abroad programs. She has directed ieiMedia summer programs in Perpignan, France (2010 and 2011) and Urbino, Italy (2009) and taught storytelling in Cagli, Italy (2007).
She was a newspaper reporter for 15 years for daily newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune and The News & Observer of Raleigh, North Carolina and was a freelance correspondent for TIME magazine. She has also written for U.S. News and World Report, Prevention,PBS MediaShift, Health, Organic Style, People, Reader’s Digest and other magazines.
She is president-elect of the College Media Association, the leading national organization of professionals and students who work with college media organizations. Her book, The Student Newspaper Survival Guide, was published by Blackwell Publishing (now Wiley-Blackwell) in 2006; a redesigned and extensively updated second edition was published in 2011.
In 2006 she was named Journalism Educator of the Year, Four-Year Division, by the California Journalism Education Coalition and in 2010 she was named Beverly Kees Educator Award by the Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She is now programming chair of that organization and is also a member the Online News Association.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
She lives in Oakland with her husband, Laird Harrison, and two teen sons.
