Stacey Woelfel

Trustee, Mid-America Regional Chapter

STACEY WOELFEL is a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism and the director of the Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism. The center uses the Missouri Method hands-on approach to teach students to artfully tell true stories in the documentary fashion.

Previously, Woelfel spent 24 years as the news director for KOMU-TV, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri. The commercial station serves as the teaching laboratory for the Missouri School of Journalism. Students at KOMU-TV are the reporter, producers, writers, photographers, and editors of six daily newscasts that go head to head with competing newscasts in the market.

Woelfel is the past national chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), past president of the Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism, past president of the board of governors of the Mid-America chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and currently serves as vice president of the board for the Kansas City Film Festival. He has received the University of Missouri’s highest teaching honor, the William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.

Woelfel is a winner of the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism, multiple Emmy and Edward R. Murrow awards, along with numerous regional and local honors. He has been inducted into the Silver Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

He is a frequent instructor in free media practices for journalists worldwide. Woelfel has authored the book Suspicious Signs and penned a chapter in Silenced: International Journalists Expose Media Censorship. He holds a doctorate in political science.