Susan Bennett
Vice president/collections and exhibits and deputy director
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Susan Bennett
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Susan Bennett is vice president/collections and exhibits and deputy director for the Newseum. She previously was director/international exhibits at the Newseum, director/Asian and European programs and director/communications for the Freedom Forum. She is a veteran editor and reporter who spent 24 years covering foreign affairs, national politics, Congress and government agencies in Washington.
Bennett came to the Freedom Forum in 1999 from USA TODAY, where she was an editor and writer, specializing in aviation safety and foreign affairs, on the national newspaper’s editorial page.
Bennett previously had been a national correspondent for Knight Ridder newspapers, where she covered Congress, presidential politics and the State Department. As a diplomatic correspondent, Bennett accompanied secretaries of state James Baker and Warren Christopher to more than 70 countries, writing about arms control, the collapse of communism, the Persian Gulf War and the Middle East for this chain of 30 U.S. newspapers and 200 wire-service clients. In 1989, Bennett received the Olive Branch award from New York University for her coverage of international security as a member of Knight Ridder’s foreign-affairs team.
Bennett also worked as Washington correspondent for the Philadelphia Daily News, covering Congress, the Pentagon and presidential politics. Philadelphia Magazine named her “best Washington correspondent.”
Before coming to Washington, she served as UPI’s state editor in Virginia and bureau chief in Memphis, Tenn. A native of Memphis, Bennett began her journalism career with UPI and was named bureau chief six months later. There she covered state politics, college and professional sports and the death of Elvis. She also was dispatched throughout the South to cover riots, natural disasters and other national news stories for UPI. In 1980, she was named state editor and Richmond bureau chief for UPI in Virginia.
A graduate of Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Ala., Bennett is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations; advisory board member of Georgetown University’s Journal of International Affairs; former board member of Women in International Security; and former president of the State Department Correspondents Association. She has been a commentator on NBC’s “Today” show, Fox News, CNN, BBC, NPR, C-Span, the Canadian Broadcasting Network and other media outlets. She has been a guest lecturer for the Poynter Institute, Foreign Service Institute, National War College, Princeton and numerous other colleges and universities. She is co-chair of the Cybersecurity Journalism Award with Carnegie Mellon University and has served as a judge for Alicia Patterson fellowships, Robert F. Kennedy awards, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists awards and Voice of America.
She is co-author with Cathy Trost of the Newseum’s book, President Kennedy Has Been Shot, and was co-editor of Running Toward Danger, the Newseum’s book on journalists who covered the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
She and her husband, John Bennett, a retired journalist, live in Annandale, Va.
(updated 7/09/09)
