Zachary R. Dowdy, MA

Assistant Professor of Practice

Contact Prof. Dowdy

Zachary Dowdy has been an instructor in Stony Brook's journalism program since January 2003. A Stony Brook graduate, he has worked for The Boston Herald, where he covered breaking news and compiled a column focusing on teen issues, and The Boston Globe, where he covered urban affairs, international issues and criminal justice with an emphasis on corrections. He reported and wrote investigative and enterprise series for both newspapers and served as a fill-in urban affairs editor on the Globe's metro desk.

More recently, Dowdy was a rewrite and criminal justice reporter and United Nations correspondent for Newsday, where he penned a news column about criminal justice and legal issues. He has served as Newsday's state, national and foreign correspondent, filing stories from out-of-state, abroad and the United Nations. 

Dowdy has taught journalism and writing courses at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and Roxbury Community College in Boston, and at Hofstra University on Long Island. He also participated as a writing coach in Partners in Print, a journalism program for elementary, middle and high school students in Boston.

At Stony Brook, Dowdy is co-coordinator of the Robert W. Greene Summer Institute for High School Journalists, a weeklong residential journalism program boot camp for students.

He served two terms as president of the Boston Association of Black Journalists and two terms as vice president-print of the New York Association of Black Journalists and served as vice president of the Editorial Unit of Local 406, the union representing employees at Newsday. 

He has mentored students at the Columbia University journalism program and NYABJ's High School Journalism Workshop. He holds a bachelor's degree in English from Stony Brook, and master's degrees in English and journalism from Harvard and Columbia universities, respectively.