• Skip to Content
  • Skip to Main Navigation
  • Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

Open Search
  • Admissions
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Graduate Admissions
    • Cost, Aid & Scholarships
    • Visit Us
    • Request Information
  • Academics
    • Degrees
      • BA in Journalism
        • News Reporting & Editing
        • Public Relations
      • BA in Media
        • Cinema and Media Arts — Studies and Production
        • Interactive & Digital Media
        • Media Advertising
        • Media Management, Industry & Policy
        • Media Science
        • Media Technologies & Culture
        • Sports Media
      • BS in Game Design
      • MS in Media
        • Design and production
        • Management
        • Journalism
        • Public Relations
      • MA in Media Arts & Sciences
      • PhD in Media Arts & Sciences
    • Concentrations
    • Specializations
    • Minors & Certificates
    • Courses
    • Honors Programs
      • Cohort Programs
        • Media Scholars
        • Ernie Pyle Scholars
      • Academic Honors Program
    • Precollege Programs
  • Research
    • Centers, Affiliates & Partners
    • Student Opportunities
  • Career Prep
    • Career Possibilities
    • Internships
    • For Employers
  • Student Experience
    • Travel Opportunities
    • Student Work Gallery
      • Gallery Archive
    • Service Learning
    • Student Organizations
    • Media Living Learning Center
  • People
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Staff Directory
    • Graduate Student Directory
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • Past Events
    • Speaker Series
  • Student Portal
    • Advising
      • Graduate Advising
      • Undergraduate Advising
    • Career Prep & Internships
      • Finding Internships & Jobs
      • Applying for Internship Courses
        • MSCH-X472: Media Internship Course
        • MSCH-X474: Journalism Internship Course
    • Get Involved
      • Student Ambassadors
      • Managing and Creating Organizations
      • Graduate Association
      • Honors Programs
      • Part-Time Jobs
    • Courses & Registration
    • Scholarships & Financial Aid
      • Travel Funding
      • Undergraduate Scholarships
      • Graduate Scholarships
    • Student Support
    • Technology
      • Connect2 Troubleshooting
      • Course Websites
      • Website Profiles
    • Travel Opportunities
      • Borders, Nation Formation, and the Transnational in the U.K.
      • Gulf Islands National Seashore
      • Semester in Los Angeles
      • Short Film Production in Prague
      • Social Media and Fashion Reporting
      • Summer in London Honors Program
  • About
    • Facilities
      • Radio-Television Building
      • Reserving Space
      • Audio/Video Production Facilities
    • Our History
    • Dean’s Advisory Board
    • Student Advisory Committee
    • Join Our Team
    • Contact
      • General Inquiries
      • Report an Issue
      • Request Photos & Materials
  • Alumni & Giving
    • Giving to the School
    • Alumni Association
      • Constitution
      • Nominations
    • Distinguished Alumni Awards
    • Alumni Stories
    • Class Notes
    • Subscribe to the Newsletter

The College of Arts + Sciences

The Media School

  • Home
  • Admissions
    • Undergraduate Admissions
    • Graduate Admissions
    • Cost, Aid & Scholarships
    • Visit Us
    • Request Information
  • Academics
    • Degrees
    • Concentrations
    • Specializations
    • Minors & Certificates
    • Courses
    • Honors Programs
    • Precollege Programs
  • Research
    • Centers, Affiliates & Partners
    • Student Opportunities
  • Career Prep
    • Career Possibilities
    • Internships
    • For Employers
  • Student Experience
    • Travel Opportunities
    • Student Work Gallery
    • Service Learning
    • Student Organizations
    • Media Living Learning Center
  • People
    • Leadership
    • Faculty Directory
    • Staff Directory
    • Graduate Student Directory
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Speaker Series
  • Search
  • Student Portal
  • About
  • Alumni & Giving
  • Home
  • People
  • Profile

Thomas French

Riley Endowed Chair in Journalism, Professor of Practice

Contact Information

Office:
Franklin Hall, Room M130U
Office Hours:
Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to noon
Email:
thfrench@indiana.edu
Phone:
727-744-7648

Biography

Thomas French, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, has spent the past quarter century redefining the possibilities of journalistic storytelling, both in his writing and in his teaching around the world.

French grew up in Indiana and attended journalism school at Indiana University’s Bloomington campus, where he was a Poynter scholar and editor-in-chief at the Indiana Daily Student, and where he won a Hearst award for a profile of a giant hog at the Indiana State Fair. An editor at the St. Petersburg Times read the hog story and hired French, just as he was graduating from IU, as a night cops reporter.

French spent the next 27 years at the Times, covering hurricanes and criminal trials and the secret lives of high school students. He experimented with narrative techniques both on deadline and nondeadline work and specialized in serial narratives, book-length stories published one chapter at a time.

In 1998, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a Sigma Delta Chi award for Angels & Demons, a series that chronicled the murder of an Ohio woman and her two teenage daughters as they vacationed in Tampa. Two of his other serials, A Cry in the Night and South of Heaven, were later published as books. Zoo Story, a project that explored the inner world of Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo, was published in book form by Hyperion in July 2010.

He wrote his latest book, Juniper, with his wife, journalist and fellow professor Kelley Benham French. Juniper, an account of their daughter’s premature arrival at 23 weeks gestation, is scheduled to be published by Little, Brown in fall 2016.

French is a Writing Fellow at the Poynter Institute and has taught there for more than 25 years. He also teaches in a nonfiction masters program at Goucher College, outside Baltimore, and has led narrative workshops across the U.S. and around the world, from the Nieman conference at Harvard to newsrooms in Dubai, Singapore and Johannesburg.

He is proud to have returned to his alma mater and teaches Narrative Journalism, Story Mechanics, Covering Murder & Mayhem, Words & Pictures and Behind the Prize. Since he began teaching at Indiana, his students have won multiple first-place awards in the Hearst competition and have won six writing championships at Hearst, outpacing every other journalism program in the country in that contest.

Related News

  • ESPN’s Wright Thompson: Find your passion and ‘treat it like a craft’
  • USA Today Network journalists describe process behind massive ‘The Wall’ project
  • Telford places 1st, Alani 3rd in national writing championship
  • Pulitzer winners McDowell, Rezendes describe investigative work
  • Students gain hands-on experience in unique Media School courses
  • Leadership
  • Faculty Directory
  • Staff Directory
  • Graduate Student Directory

The Media School resources and social media channels

  • Faculty & Staff Intranet
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Celebrating 200 years

Indiana University

Accessibility | Privacy Notice | Copyright © 2019 The Trustees of Indiana University