Professor Michael Parks
Former Editor of the Los Angeles TImes
Professor Michael Parks visited Australia as a guest of the US Studies Centre in October 2008. He was a panellist at a public forum on "The President-Elect: What Can We Expect?" as well as guest of honour at a US Business Leadership Forum luncheon speaking on "America at the Crossroads".
Michael Parks is a journalist and educator whose assignments have taken him around the globe, and whose "balanced and comprehensive" coverage of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa earned him the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. From 1997-2000, Parks served as editor of the Los Angeles Times, a period during which the Times garnered four additional Pulitzer Prizes.
From his first overseas assignment covering the war in Vietnam as the Baltimore Sun's Saigon correspondent, Parks has reported on major international news events from a variety of international capitals, including Beijing, Moscow, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and Jerusalem. He joined the Los Angeles Times in 1980 and in 1995 was promoted to deputy foreign editor and later managing editor, before taking the helm as editor in 1997. As editor of the Los Angeles Times, Parks was responsible for news coverage and editorial page positions of the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States.
