Mary Lynn Young, PhD

Director and Associate Professor

Mary Lynn Young, PhD, is the director of the UBC Graduate School of Journalism.  She is an associate professor and an award-winning academic and university educator. She joined the faculty of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia in January 2000.

Dr. Young is a recognized authority on gender and the media, newsroom sociology, media credibility, representations of crime (including a new project on the media coverage of marijuana in Canada), media economics and content analysis. She has worked as an editor, national business columnist and senior crime reporter at major daily newspapers in Canada and the United States.

She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 2005 with her doctoral dissertation, Crime Content and Media Economics: Gendered Practices and Sensational Stories, 1950-2000. Prior to returning to graduate school, Dr. Young was a reporter and editor for more than a decade at a variety of daily newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, The Hamilton Spectator and The Houston Post. Most recently she was a national business columnist at The Globe and Mail from 2003 to 2006.

In January 2007, Dr. Young launched the FeministMediaProject.com in partnership with other feminist academics. The website provides a feminist perspective in media depictions of missing and murdered women. As part of her work in this field, Dr. Young is a member of the Board of Directors at the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre in Vancouver.

She is also a consultant, public speaker on current media and policy issues, and a frequent media commentator. Her recent experience includes producing a media report and appearing as an expert witness in 2007 at the Cornwall Public Inquiry on allegations of historical abuse over a 20-year period involving youth in the area.

Her list of awards includes the Rufus Z. Smith Award for the best article published in the American Review of Canadian Studies in 2006. The article, “Cross-Border Crime Stories: American Media, Canadian Law, and Murder in the Internet Age,” appeared in the autumn issue. She received a University of British Columbia teaching award in 2003. In 2000, Dr. Young won a Freedom Forum teaching fellowship for journalism educators at the University of Indiana.

She holds a PhD from the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, and a Master of Arts from the same program.