Robert Tinsley

After joining ICFJ, I described our organization to a friend. She gave me a thoughtful look and said: “Oh, you have a job with a heart!” Another said, “You have a job where you use both your degrees – do you know how rare that is?” Both are right. Being a part of ICFJ has heightened my convictions about journalism’s power to improve lives, and it has kept me here 20 years. ICFJ also offers me an outlet to experience other peoples and other ways of life, particularly in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, a region that always has drawn me.

My background: Before coming to ICFJ, I worked part time at The Washington Post as a copy editor and night editor on the foreign desk. Before that, I was a senior copy editor at The Dallas Morning News and an editor on the news and business desks at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon. I hold a master of arts degree in Russian and East European studies from Yale University and a bachelor of sciences in journalism from the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. As a student at Kansas, I also took part in an exchange program with Warsaw University in Poland. I speak respectable Polish and Russian and conversational Spanish.

Ask me about: Grammar geekdom, clever puns and groanworthy wordplay, collegiate athletics

Contact me: LinkedIn