Christopher Conte (editor)

Christopher Conte is a journalist, editor and journalism teacher based in Silver Spring, Maryland. He began his lifelong career in journalism in 1973 as a reporter for the Rutland Herald in Vermont during what now seems to be the glory days of journalism – days before the digital revolution and social media sent the newspaper business into retreat. After four years covering state politics and policy, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he covered congressional budget and tax committees for Congressional Quarterly magazine. From there, he jumped to the Wall Street Journal, where he spent 15 years in the paper's Washington bureau, first as a reporter specializing in economic issues and then as an editor focusing on both domestic policy and international affairs. He wrote front page columns on labor issues and politics. In 1995, he became a free-lance career, covering state and local government for Governing Magazine and conducting research and writing reports for a range of international institutions like the World Bank and the International Finance Corp. and nonprofit organizations and nonprofit organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for whom he reported on health issues and the Benton Foundation, for whom he reported on the social role of digital communications. His involvement in international affairs led him to become a trainer and mentor to journalists in Africa, India and east Asia for the International Center for Journalists and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). He spent 2008-2010 in Uganda training journalists who report on health -- an assignment that led him later to plan and edit "Crossroads: Women Coming of Age in Today's Uganda," an anthology of writings by Ugandan women. In 2023, he published another Ugandan anthology, "Remembering the Future: Reflections on Ugandan Culture in Changing Times," which delves into the clash between traditional African values on the ideologies behind globalization.