UMass Amherst Alumni Association
Awards & Grants
Distinguished Alumni Awards Recipient
Edward M. Fouhy '56
Ed Fouhy is a media consultant with ME Communications Partners in Chatham, MA. He was until recently executive director of the Pew Center on the States, editor of Stateline.org, the daily news service published by the center and director of the Government Performance Project. The $4m study, a joint journalism-academic research initiative, ranked the 50 state governments on their administration of their money, people, information and infrastructure. Stateline.org, founded in 1999 tracks public policy developments at the state level and receives more than a million page views a month.
Fouhy is a career journalist, a reporter, news producer and news executive of more than 35 years. He began his career in Boston as a reporter covering the state capital. After three years as news director of WBZ-TV, Boston he joined CBS News and went to Saigon as bureau chief at the height of the war. Later he was Los Angeles Bureau Chief, then senior Washington producer of the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" during the Watergate years, then CBS News Washington Bureau Chief and subsequently CBS News Vice President and Director, directing the network's worldwide news bureaus and correspondents.
Fouhy subsequently served as ABC News Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief, and later was executive producer for prime time news magazine programs at NBC News.
He was executive producer of the 1988 and 1992 presidential debates, and was instrumental in changing their traditional format. The revamped debate series in 1992, was seen by more Americans than any other political broadcasts to that time.
Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he worked in Eastern Europe and later in Latin America helping journalists building independent news organizations.
Prior to establishing the Center on the States, Fouhy was founder and, for five years, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. The center was an early advocate of many of the innovations in journalism now common in the industry such as public editors and greater transparency in editorial practices.
He has won five national Emmy Awards for the hard news and magazine programs he has produced. He was, as well, recipient of the Drew Pearson Award for investigative reporting.
Fouhy has spoken about and written numerous articles on media issues. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, Dallas Times-Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Cape Cod Times, Broadcasting and Cable, Nieman Reports, American Journalism Review and other publications. He has spoken to scores of media groups including staffs of newspapers owned by Knight-Ridder, Lee Newspapers and Scripps-Howard, as well as many broadcast news organizations.
Fouhy is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He did graduate work at Boston University; he also holds an honorary doctorate from his alma mater.
He was a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, and later a member of the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service from 1990-1993, where he co-taught a seminar on the impact of media on the formation of foreign policy. He is a trustee of the International Research and Exchanges Board that conducts media development programs in the Middle East and Africa.
Fouhy served as an officer in the Marine Corps. He was cited for outstanding leadership while commanding an infantry platoon deployed in Lebanon. He is married to the former Barbara Mahoney ’56; they have two grown children, and live in Chatham, Massachusetts.
