Mary Newsom

Mary Newsom Mary Newsom is a skilled journalist, blogger and urbanist from Charlotte, N.C., where for 15 years she has been researching and commenting on metro and regional growth issues for the Charlotte Observer. The Observer is the largest newspaper in both Carolinas, covering one of the fastest-growing and fastest-sprawling Sun Belt citistates in the nation.

Whether you’re a sprawl-subdivision developer, a NIMBY who’s fighting transit-oriented densities or a real estate lobbyist using hefty campaign donations to win City Council votes, Mary has probably gored your ox.

As an associate editor and editorial board member at the Observer, she writes a weekly column, Urban Outlook, and writes The Naked City blog for the Observer, as well as writing many of the newspaper’s unsigned editorials.

Newsom has conducted editorial campaigns on behalf of sidewalks, street-level retail, historic preservation, street connectivity, light-rail transit and against cul-de-sacs and sprawl, among other things.

In 2007-2008 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, one of 15 U.S. journalists chosen to spend the academic year studying at the university. In 2005-2006, she was a fellow with the Knight Program in Community Building at the University of Miami School of Architecture. In 2002 the Charlotte Section of the American Institute of Architects awarded Mary its Laurel Award for her contributions to the improvement of the Charlotte region’s built environment. Her columns have won the “best in Charlotte” awards from both Charlotte magazine and Charlotte Creative Loafing.

In addition she has won numerous journalism awards for her editorial writing and for investigative projects — including the Robert F. Kennedy Award Gold Medal for a series on neglect in the South Carolina State Mental Hospital.

She was a founder of the Charlotte Urban Forum in the 1990s and after it faded she helped found its successor, Civic By Design. Both have been community discussion forums on topics of urban design, smart growth and how this very suburban Sun Belt metro region can mature into a city.

Newsom is popular with the Citistates Group, having edited with style and thoroughness the Citistates Reports on the Charlotte region, authored by Neal Peirce, Curtis Johnson and Citistates colleague Alex Marshall and run in the Observer, first in 1995 and a second time in 2008.

Last updated February 23, 2009