Alex Jones announced plans to retire from Shorenstein Center

Alex Jones

After fifteen years as director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Alex S. Jones has announced that this academic year will be his last.  He will be leaving the position as of July 1.

In announcing his decision, Jones said: "My decision is based on a sense that the time for change has come – both for me and for the Center I truly love. My tenure at the Shorenstein Center's helm has spanned perhaps the most tumultuous and challenging period in media history, and I am proud to say that the Center has evolved as those profound changes demanded. Indeed, the job I assumed in 2000 was to be director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, and was focused almost entirely on traditional news. It is now the Shorenstein Center on Media – a reflection of the dizzying reality that in 2015 all forms of media affect politics and public policy.

"It has been my honor to have been a part of a fantastic team of staff, faculty, fellows, colleagues and benefactors – all of whom have contributed to the Shorenstein Center's success. We are in a position of financial strength and are poised to build on the foundation that was created first by Marvin Kalb, the Center's founding director, and then broadened and deepened over the past decade and a half. 

"As I think back over those years, I am especially proud of several things that the Center has achieved:

• "Engaged the media and public through scores of events and thoughtful and groundbreaking papers and books published on important media issues by Shorenstein faculty and fellows.
• "Demonstrated a powerful commitment to HKS students in the form of digital instruction, workshops, internships, scholarships, speakers, lectures and courses geared to aid them as they set out to change the world.
• "Achieved a financial foundation for the Center that ensures its long-term future, largely through the great generosity of the Shorenstein family.
• "Raised the Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prizes to the highest level of professional recognition, with the support of the Greenfield family.
• "Created Journalist's Resource, which now provides free access to the best scholarly research to give depth to journalism and also teach aspiring journalists the habit of using research in their journalism, with the support of the Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.  
• "Maintained the Shorenstein Center's reputation as a standard-bearer for the highest-quality reportage and the best journalistic values in a world of epochal change."

Jones said that he plans on embarking "on what in Cuba is known as 'Third Life,' meaning the rich and exciting period in which to pursue long-delayed projects, to study and learn, and to follow one's own peculiar interests."

He added: "My feelings at this moment are overwhelmingly of gratitude – for the chance to work at such a wonderful institution and to do work I consider so very important. I believe that high-quality journalism is essential to democracy, and it has been my great pride to do all I could to ensure that the Shorenstein Center stood for that standard of excellence."

Jones covered the press for The New York Times from 1983 to 1992 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. His most recent book, "Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy," was published in August 2009. The New York Times Sunday Book Review called Jones a bringer of light in the encircling doom.

In 1991, he coauthored (with Susan E. Tifft) "The Patriarch: The Rise and Fall of the Bingham Dynasty," which Business Week magazine selected as one of the best business books of the year. In 1992, he left the Times to work on "The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind the New York Times" (also coauthored with Tifft), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in biography.

He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a host of National Public Radio's On the Media, and host and executive editor of PBS's Media Matters. In 2011, he was awarded the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award by the University of Texas for career achievement and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His brother, Gregg S. Jones, is president and CEO of Jones Media and co-publisher of The Greeneville (Tenn.) Sun.