Rate My Professor Susan Paterno

Susan Paterno serves as Professor of English and Director of the Journalism Program at Chapman University in the Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. She holds the Tedeschi Professorship of Journalism and the Wang-Fradkin Professorship in Scholarly Excellence. Paterno earned a Bachelor of Arts in Latin from Occidental College and a Master of Science from Northwestern University. Her distinguished career in journalism includes serving as a senior writer for American Journalism Review for 15 years, staff writer for the Orange County Register, and reporter for City News Service in Los Angeles. At Chapman, she leads the journalism program, emphasizing accountability journalism and community-centered reporting through initiatives like the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service, which published 114 student articles in 2024.

Paterno's research specializations center on accountability journalism, access and equity in higher education, and the college admissions process. Her book, Game On: Why College Admission is Rigged and How to Beat the System, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2021, earned First Place for Nonfiction Book from California Press Women and First Place for General Nonfiction from the National Federation of Press Women. She has received the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, its highest honor for Criticism, the President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2024 for mentoring Latinx students and journalists, and Chapman University’s One-Year Scholarly and Creative Activities Release Award for 2025-2026. Her investigative articles, such as “Santa Barbara Smackdown” and “The Sad Saga of Gary Webb,” have set First Amendment precedents in California, inspired the documentary Shadows of Liberty, and appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Forbes, and USA Today. Paterno has collaborated on books including The Newswriters Handbook and Talk Straight, Listen Carefully: The Art of Interviewing, and contributed to anthologies like Undercover Reporting, Deception for Journalism’s Sake.