About Allissa Hosten
Allissa Hosten, 26, is a college professor and award-winning journalist who champions balanced images of minorities in mass media.
Hosten's trademark profile pieces, which spotlight extraordinary people, have been syndicated by the Associated Press in newspapers nationwide. Her acclaimed work also has appeared in Oprah Magazine, The Baltimore Sun and many more media outlets, garnering the Weinstein-Luby Outstanding Young Journalist Award, and the Freedom Forum's coveted Chips Quinn Scholars award along the way.
Born in Washington, D.C., and raised during the controversial Mayor Marion Berry "sting" era, Hosten, at an early age, wanted to challenge the stereotypical images of African Americans in media. Her first front-page newspaper story, written as a college intern in Upstate New York, dispelled a long-standing myth that most of Utica's poor, African American girls were involved in gangs.
Since then, Hosten has reported from Capitol Hill to Sugar Hill, interviewing everyone from dignitaries like Presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, to pop culture icons like Alicia Keys.
When Hosten is not writing, she runs the nonprofit she founded, The Write Start. The innovative program helps K-12 students improve their literacy by practicing journalism. Hosten also teaches journalism in a traditional setting, at Morgan State University. She was appointed in 2007 as one of the inaugural professors of the academy's new urban journalism program.
Hosten herself attended Xavier University of Louisiana and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. She now resides in Baltimore, in a 100-year-old brownstone she is painstakingly restoring. She has a boxer puppy named Buddha.
- Occupation: Professor and Freelance Journalist
- Organization: Morgan State University
- Location: Baltimore, MD 21218 USA
Stories
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Writing
Content on this site written by Allissa Hosten (includes contributory writing):
