Professor
Journalism Studies

Chair in Business and Financial Journalism
Society of American Business Editors and Writers

208 Neff Hall
Missouri School of Journalism
Columbia, MO 65211-1200

• Phone: 573-884-4839
• E-mail:

As SABEW chair, MARTHA STEFFENS teaches business and financial journalism, as well as organizing seminars for business journalism professionals. Steffens has taught more than 450 professional in business workshops sponsored the Southern Newspaper Publishers Assn. and SABEW. She assumed the chair in 2002, after a 30-year career in newspapers, including executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner, and earlier the Press & Sun Bulletin in Binghamton, N.Y.

Steffens' two-year economic project in Binghamton, which inspired citizens to take a proactive role in planning the community's economic future, has been studied by academics around the world. She was an editor at the Los Angeles Times business desk. She held other editing and reporting roles at the Minneapolis Star, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Orange County Register, Dayton Daily News and Evansville (Ind.) Courier.

Steffens is a frequent lecturer at conferences across the United States, and has lectured in Norway, Jamaica, Italy and the Czech Republic. For four years, she worked with Colombian journalists, helping them plan community-based projects. In summer 2002, she was professional in residence at the Moscow Press Development Institute, training Russian journalists in newspaper management. She was part of a U.S. delegation to address the need for aggressive business reporting in China.

Steffens is a graduate of Indiana University, and is a past officer of the New York State Associated Press Association. She has served on the boards of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism and CBS Marketwatch.