About |

ELIZABETH BIRGE is a tenured Professor of Communication at William Paterson University in Wayne, NJ and a journalist. She has held staff positions at the Chicago Tribune and the (New Jersey) Star-Ledger and was a contributing writer for the DailyKos.com. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Miami Herald, Indianapolis Star, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, and other publications.

While at the Chicago Tribune she contributed to the series “Killing Our Children”, which won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards’ Grand Prize which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1994. She won the Peter J. Lisagor Award for column writing, given by the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, in 1995.

At William Paterson she served as chair of the Communication Department, which at the time had 1,000 students and 22 faculty, and over saw the completion of a $2 million renovation of the TV studios. She has an M.A. from Syracuse University and a B.A. from the College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee, MA and is a member of The Society of Professional Journalists, the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication and Investigative Reporters and Editors.