Skip to main content
ONA26 Main banner
Back

Charles Sennott (he/him/his)

Founder
GroundTruth

About the Founder, Charles M. Sennott

Charles Sennott is the founder of The GroundTruth Project, under his leadership, GroundTruth has been widely recognized for its excellence, including DuPont, Emmy, Edward R. Murrow and World Press Photo awards.

This new editorial spinoff, GroundTruth, is a separate and independent entity focusing on thought leadership and developing the voice of the weekly GroundTruth newsletter.

A leading social entrepreneur in media and journalism, Sennott is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author, documentary producer and editor with 40 years of experience in international, national and local journalism.

Reporting on the front lines of wars and insurgencies in at least 25 countries, including the post 9-11 conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Arab Spring, Sennott began his career in local news covering cops, courts and municipal government. Sennott’s deep experience in reporting led him to dedicate himself to supporting and training the next generation of journalists to tell the most important stories of our time. Sennott is also the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website that launched in 2009 and was folded into GBH and PRX The World in 2014.

Previously, Sennott worked for many years as a reporter at the New York Daily News and then the Boston Globe, where he became Bureau Chief for the Middle East and then for Europe, and a leader of the paper's international coverage from 1997 to 2005. Sennott has also served as a correspondent for PBS FRONTLINE, the PBS NewsHour and PRX The World. He has contributed news analysis to the BBC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, GBH’s Boston Public Radio, and others.

Sennott is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (BA 1984 History) Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism (MS 1986) and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University (2006.) In 2016, Sennott was accepted into the DRK portfolio of leading social entrepreneurs who can make a difference and in 2017 completed the Sulzberger Executive Training Program at Columbia University. In 2024, Sennott received the World Press Freedom Award from the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation.
Sennott was a Visiting Scholar at Boston College’s Institute for Liberal Arts, where he taught from 2019 through 2024 a seminar titled “Truth: A Short History.” Currently, Sennott is a Senior Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Communication, Leadership and Policy, focusing his research on what he calls “a global crisis in local news that has become a crisis for democracy.”

Sennott serves on the board of directors of Ukraine’s leading news organization, Ukrainska Pravda, and on the board of advisors for the Overseas Press Club Foundation and the International Press Institute's North American Committee.


Presentation(s):