Steve Elliott, Director of Digital News, Cronkite News Service, Professor of Practice

Steve Elliott, a professor of practice, is the founding director of Cronkite News Service's print and digital services. He joined the Cronkite School in September 2006 after a 19-year career with The Associated Press, the world’s largest news organization.

With Cronkite News Service, Elliott leads groups of advanced students in coverage of statewide stories for newspapers and news Web sites. Their stories have appeared regularly in nearly 30 publications.

Elliott’s AP career included tours as a reporter, newsroom manager, bureau chief and business executive. He served as chief of bureau for Arizona from 1998-2003, leading coverage of the 2002 wildfires and other national news. He also directed a landmark audit of Arizona public records access, overseeing dozens of editors and reporters from newspapers across the state. His work was honored by the Arizona Newspapers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists.

In 2003, he went to AP’s headquarters in New York as deputy director of newspaper markets, helping develop and market news products such as asap, a pilot product aimed at attracting young readers, and a line of pre-paginated sports agate products. In early 2006, he was named AP’s first director of internal communications.

Elliott, who was raised in Phoenix, was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Arizona in 1987, earning a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and religious studies. He was the outstanding UA journalism graduate and served as editor of the Tombstone Epitaph.

He started his professional journalism career in the Honolulu bureau of The Associated Press, where he was a reporter and broadcast editor for four years before being promoted to the AP national desk in New York as an editor and supervisor. He later served as news editor in the Milwaukee bureau and assistant chief of bureau in San Francisco. He returned to Arizona in 1997 as news editor in the Phoenix bureau and was named chief of bureau the following year.

Elliott served as a member of the Cronkite School Endowment Board and earned an M.B.A. from ASU’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters and Editors and serves on the Arizona Newspapers Association's Education Task Force. He blogs about writing and editing as Mr. Rewrite (www.irewrite.net).

Elliott and his wife, Christine, live in Chandler with their son, Adam.