Lori Johnston, MFA

I provide relevant, real-world experiences to help students develop foundational reporting, interviewing and writing skills in today’s fast-paced media landscape. 

I teach a variety of journalism classes with a focus on active learning, including Reporting I: Critical Skills for Reporting and Storytelling, religion reporting, home and garden reporting, critical writing, feature writing, investigative reporting and Media Savvy: Becoming Digitally Literate, the capstone course in UGA's Certificate in News Literacy. I'm an ardent user of the AP Stylebook, serving as a guiding light on AP Style for students and faculty.

Recent UGA awards include:

• 2024 UGA Creative Teaching Award for launching Reporting I, an introductory foundational reporting and writing course in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication

• $25,000 Learning Technologies Grant for "Beat BINGO: Interactive Game Application" proposal

• $5,oo0 affordable course materials grant to create a Reporting I textbook used by all sections of the course and multiple instructors; the textbook is updated each semester

I graduated from Grady College in 1995 with a bachelor's in journalism and in the inaugural class of the Master of Fine Arts in Narrative Media Writing program in 2017.

I am a former Associated Press writer and magazine editor. I am co-founder of Fast Copy News Service with my husband, Andy (ABJ ’88), editor in residence at UGA, editor of The Oglethorpe Echo and a professor in UGA's sports media certificate program. Fast Copy is a writing and editing business whose work has been published by Cox Media Group/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scripps Networks (HGTV.com, DIYNetwork.com and TravelChannel.com), Atlanta Magazine and Georgia Trend, among numerous other media outlets. 

I direct the Journalism Writing Lab in the Cox Institute for Journalism Innovation, Management and Leadership, which provides free programs for students and newsrooms to enhance reporting, writing and digital and conceptual innovation for community journalism in the Southeast. I also create multiplatform materials with tips on journalistic writing and editing for faculty and students through the Cox Institute’s site and my YouTube channel, Skills for Storytelling and Reporting.