Terrell J. Starr
Political Correspondent
Fusion
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, M.S.
Philander Smith College, B.A.
Terrell J. Starr is Fusion’s political correspondent covering the 2016 campaign, as well as Russian and U.S. politics, women’s issues and race. His journalism experience includes public radio, social media, magazines, photography and online reporting.
Starr is an introspective reporter who reveals a great deal about his personal life. He has been frank about his struggle with depression, sending out a regular tweet, “I took my depression/anxiety medication and I’m off to work and feeling great!” He wrote an article for The Root confessing he hadn’t had a date since his freshman year of college in 1998 and told his Twitter followers he met his birth father on Facebook at the age of 29.
Starr created a stir in the journalism community when he tweeted that he felt an editor was rejecting a story because it wouldn’t be favorable to Bernie Sanders. Starr said he wanted to be transparent because of the responsibility that Black journalists have. “I felt like I was right, and I still feel like I was right, to not only discuss the process, but to talk about it on Twitter … For us to see the best of any candidate, we really need to see fair and objective and challenging journalism, regardless of who it is,” Starr told The Los Angeles Times.
The Path
After completing his Fulbright scholarship, Starr was an associate editor for News One. Following this, he became a senior editor at AlterNet, a progressive news magazine and online community.
“As a Black reporter, I feel like it’s an obligation for me to be that voice that’s in the newsroom that says, ‘I have a connection with this community, and I know what’s going on.’… We have a great responsibility as black reporters, or reporters of color, because for us, it’s about more than the news,” Starr said.
Noteworthy
Starr was a Fulbright Journalism grantee. He also attended Nova Mova Russian Language School in Kyiv, Ukraine.
@russian_starr pinned tweet
https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/771726584051036162
