Elaine Monaghan

Biography

An award-winning teacher and veteran reporter, writer and foreign correspondent, Elaine joined the Media School faculty as professor of practice in 2014 and teaches undergraduate and graduate students about data, editing, reporting and writing. She is a founding faculty member at the Observatory on Social Media and serves on the board of the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism. In May 2025, she was named one of two finalists for Teacher of the Year by The Scripps Howard Fund, in partnership with the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award recognizes an outstanding faculty member who has made consistent contributions to the improvement of student learning.

As a reporter and editor for her professional alma mater, Reuters, Elaine supported the international news organization’s teams of correspondents covering the Ukraine war and events in Russia. Elaine has an MFA in creative writing and a Master’s in German and Russian. She also speaks French and some Polish.

Born in Scotland, Elaine learned the craft of multimedia journalism at Reuters’ prestigious training program in London. From Moscow, she covered conflict, disasters, elections, financial markets and economic and business news across the former Soviet Union. As chief correspondent in Kyiv, she led Reuters’ coverage of Ukraine and of the ascent to power of President Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. In her role a s chief correspondent in Dublin, Elaine led a team of journalists covering Ireland’s entry to European monetary union and of Northern Ireland’s historic peace deal.

Elaine’s years as a Reuters correspondent taught her how to work under stress, at speed, in collaborative teams. During the Kosovo conflict, she reported from the refugee camps of Albania and Macedonia, and from Kosovo itself. As State Department correspondent, she traveled with secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell. She wrote about the Iraq invasion and other top U.S. stories, and penned a regular online column, Abroad in America, as Washington correspondent for The Times.

Elaine wrote and co-authored “On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence,” a CIA memoir translated into several languages. She blogged for Microsoft UK about the 2008 presidential election campaign and served as foreign policy correspondent and as a magazine writer for Congressional Quarterly. As vice president for a strategic communications firm in Washington DC, she served numerous clients, including Amnesty International USA, spearheading policy-changing work on the U.S. use of deadly drones in Pakistan and working with Russian dissidents Pussy Riot on their first visit to the United States.

2025-26

Elaine taught Story Lab II, Story Lab III and the Media Ethics capstone course in the BAJ. In her role as board chair of IU’s Poynter Center, she led work on a series of visits to campus by renowned investigative journalist and author Carl Bernstein.

Spring 2024

Elaine taught a new 300-level course, Social Media Theory and Practice, which helped students understand more about the origins, uses, advantages and disadvantages of using social platforms to engage with the world around them.

Spring 2023

Elaine helped coordinate the Story Lab course sequence, sat on Master’s capstone committees in the MS degree and served in other roles including on the search committee for the new dean for The Media School.

2022

Elaine coordinated Story Lab II, and Social Media Manipulation 101, a new course about how to understand and navigate the spread of dis- and misinformation online taught by a team of faculty from The Media School and the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.

2021-2022

In Fall 2021, Elaine taught the J-410 media ethics capstone course and a 300-level course in data analysis for journalism and public relations, which serves a mixed community of undergraduates and graduates. She taught both these courses in a new, ultra-collaborative and experimental classroom in Woodburn Hall. 

In Spring 2022, Elaine led a team of faculty teaching Story Lab II, a new course focused on collaborative, multimedia approaches to journalistic storytelling.

2020-2021

In Fall 2020 Elaine taught C-225, a required reporting class for undergraduates, J-505, the intensive reporting and writing workshop for Master of Science students in journalism, and J-410, the capstone media ethics course in the journalism degree. In Spring 2021, Elaine taught R-349, Public Relations writing, as a service learning course, working closely with our neigbhbors in Washington County, Indiana, through IU’s Center for Rural Engagement. She also co-taught an intensive, pre-semester course called “Hacks and Flacks,” which examined the intersection of journalism and public relations.

2019-2020

Elaine taught C-225, a required reporting class for undergraduates, and J-505, the intensive reporting and writing workshop for Master of Science students in journalism. This academic year her graduate students are focusing on covering the environment, with an emphasis on solutions journalism.

Spring 2019

Elaine taught the media ethics, J-410 course. Her students collaborated with Kinzen, a startup co-founded by Mark Little, founder of Storyful. She continues to pursue collaborative, interdisciplinary opportunities with colleagues across campus and further afield.

Fall 2018

Elaine taught Public Relations Writing for undergraduates and the intensive reporting and writing course for graduate students in the Media School Master’s program.

Spring 2018 

Elaine taught an interdisciplinary course that took students from the media school, religious studies and the School of Global and International Studies to Ireland on a reporting trip over spring break. Students presented their work, at an April 24-26 symposium she organized called “Representing Religion.” The symposium, which featured leading scholars and journalists from IU, the United States, Europe and Africa, was funded by a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs.

Research, grants, awards, other university affiliations

• Board chair, the Poynter Center for the Study of American Ethics and Institutions
• Recipient of American Council of Learned Societies’ inaugural grants for its Luce/ACLS Program in Religion, Journalism & International Affairs, for “Perceptions of Religion”
• Advisory board, Center for Religion & the Human
• Recipient of Kemp teaching award from The Media School, journalism, and of IU Trustees Teaching Award
• Two-time recipient, Kemp Development Grant from Media School’s journalism unit, to revise core reporting courses for graduate students in journalism; 2020 winner of Kemp teaching fellowship
• Affiliate faculty, Center for International Media Law and Policy Studies, and Islamic Studies and Russian & East European Institute, both at IU’s School of Global & International Studies

Recent Interviews, Publications

• ‘We will find the murderers’: Kyiv launches probe into shooting of unarmed man. Sunday Morning Herald (Reuters pickup)
• Monaghan supports Reuters team covering Ukraine war. The Media School
• Professor, veteran reporter brings years of experience to classroom, campus podcast. News at IU
• Threads of literary citizenship: Four questions with Elaine Monaghan. Interview about the craft of writing with author and writing coach Chip Scanlan
• Frenemies: How the CIA and Polish Spies Went from Bitter Rivals to Post-Cold War Comrades. SpyTalk
• A Descent into Online Terror. SpyTalk at the Movies
• Hard Brexit conjures nightmares across Ireland. News-Decoder
• While Boris Johnson fiddles, my Scottish emigre heart burns. Washington Post
• Journalists: Solitary Stretcher-bearers or Guiding Lights? News-Decoder
• Interview with Photojournalist Steve Raymer on WFIU’s “Profiles”
• Reflections on Noblesville Shooting: Our Schools Shouldn’t Be War Zones. The Indianapolis Star
• Do You Want Change? Beware Inertia. News-Decoder
• Interview with New York Times Columnist Roger Cohen on WFIU’s “Profiles”
• Interview with NPR correspondent Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson on WFIU’s “Profiles”
• Interviewed by Patrick O’Meara on WFIU’s “Profiles”
• “Lookouts on the Watchtower”
• “This is Russia”

Creative Writing

Fiction

An Unfortunate Accident. In Fiction International. Issue 55: Dream

Nonfiction

Song for a Massacre Survivor. Noli Me Tangere. Indiana University. 

Sugar and Salt. Wraparound South. Spring 2021

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