Charlie Scudder

Charlie Scudder is a professor of practice in SMU Meadows’ Division of Journalism, who teaches classes on media literacy, digital journalism, news reporting, journalism ethics and critical thinking.

He is a freelance writer and editor based in Dallas-Fort Worth whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Dallas Morning News, Tampa Bay Times, USA TODAY, Gannett newspapers, SAVEUR magazine, Texas Monthly, Garden & Gun and others. He has made broadcast appearances on NPR’s Morning Edition, MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, FOX News’s Shepard Smith Reporting, and local talk radio stations in Ireland, Seattle, Fargo and more. He has also appeared on international broadcasts on Israeli, Canadian and Swedish television.

He is a graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism, where he was editor-in-chief of the nationally recognized Indiana Daily Student. He received a master’s degree in American studies from Southern Methodist University. 

Scudder is the creator, writer and host of The Unforgotten: Unnatural Causes, an investigative journalism podcast about a Dallas serial killer, and was the co-editor of Indiana Daily Student: 150 Years of Headlines, Deadlines and Bylines (Indiana University Press, 2019). He was board president for the Indiana University Student Publications Alumni Association from 2018 through 2022. Previously, he was an adjunct professor at the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas and SMU.

Scudder was part of the reporting team at The Dallas Morning News named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in breaking news reporting for coverage of the deadly July 7, 2016, ambush on Dallas police officers. His work has won multiple local, state and national reporting awards including the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in writing and the Michael Brick Storytelling Award.

Scudder lives in Arlington, TX, and is also an award-winning homebrewer and BJCP-certified craft beer judge.