Andrew Leckey, who has built the business journalism program at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication into a national powerhouse, is retiring after 14 years at Arizona State University.
As the Reynolds Endowed Chair in Business Journalism and president of the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, Leckey has led efforts to improve the quality of business and economic reporting around the world while also teaching and mentoring hundreds of Cronkite students.
His students have gone on to report and produce for major news organizations, ranging from Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal to CNBC and Rolling Stone magazine.
As head of the Reynolds Center, Leckey oversees the Barlett & Steele Awards that recognize the best investigative business journalism in the country each year. He also helped develop programs and training for more than 20,000 business journalists and educators in the U.S. and abroad. Last year, he led a conference in Dubai for business journalists from seven countries in South Asia, which resulted in the formation of the first business journalism association in that region.
Leckey launched the Reynolds Center at the American Press Institute in Virginia in 2003 under a three-year grant from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. It was moved to the Cronkite School in 2006 with permanent Reynolds Foundation funding.
Before joining Cronkite, Leckey was a longtime nationally syndicated investment columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times and a CNBC television anchor and reporter. He is an elected member of the Board of Governors of the Society for Advancing Business and Economic Writing (SABEW), and has authored or edited 10 books about business and finance.
Leckey has been awarded three Fulbright awards for overseas business journalism projects. He was a Fulbright Scholar in China in 2014 and a Fulbright Specialist in Uganda in 2016 and Taipei in 2019.
Leckey said he plans to continue working on State Department projects abroad and to remain active in SABEW and other professional journalism organizations. But mostly, he said, he’s looking forward to spending more time his grandson, Quinn Leckey, in Colorado.
“I wish to thank Dean Callahan, the outstanding Cronkite School and, most of all, our talented Business Journalism students for the opportunity to foster accurate, unbiased business and economic reporting that benefits society,” he said.
