Joe Grimm is visiting editor in residence at Michigan State University. He teaches public affairs reporting, copy editing, career branding and a course in which students publish guides to cultural competence. 

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In that course, called “Bias Busters,” students have published about 20, 100-question guides on racial, ethnic, religious and occupational groups. They have covered African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, veterans, gender identity and sexual orientation, American Jews, Muslim Americans, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and more. His students have also published a book called “To My Professor: Student Voices for Great College Teaching” and “The New Bullying.” The multimedia books are available in print and digital editions on major online book sites. Apart from his work at Michigan State, he has published eight other books.

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Grimm is campus adviser for the student chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and former adviser to the campus chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. 

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Since 2009, he has taught at or been co-head instructor at the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute for high school students. He has also guest lectured in Russia and Saudi Arabia. He has written for Editor & Publisher magazine, the Newspaper Association of America’s Fusion magazine and UNITY: Journalists of Color.

 

Grimm has worked with the Freedom Forum’s Diversity Institute, the Poynter Institute, the American Press Institute and reznetnews.org, a national Native American news site. He launched the JobsPage, a journalism careers site, and "Ask the Recruiter" which appeared in the Poynter Institute’s Career Center. 

Grimm was co-director of The Living Textbook, a project of the Asian American Journalists Association for Arab American middle school students in Dearborn, Michigan. 

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Grimm began his newspaper career at The Oakland Press in Pontiac, Michigan. He joined the Detroit Free Press in 1983, where he was copy editor, news editor, front-page designer, weekend editor and the youngest full-time ombudsman in the country. Grimm was newsroom recruiter and staff development editor from 1990 to 2008 and worked with corporate recruiting teams at Gannett and Knight Ridder. During that time, the Free Press developed the most diverse newsroom among the nation’s 20 largest newspapers.

 

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and a teaching certificate from the University of Michigan.