HERBERT LOWE
Biography

Herbert Lowe, a criminal courts reporter in New York City, is the 15th president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), the world’s oldest and largest organization for journalists of color. A native of Camden, N.J., Lowe, 40, was elected on Aug. 8, 2003, to a two-year

Mira and Herbert Lowe

term as president of the 3,100-member association and chairman of its 19-member board of directors. In Nov. 2003, he joined the board of directors of Unity: Journalists of Color, Inc.

As president, Lowe is accountable for NABJ’s $2 million annual budget and its national office staff based in Adelphi, Md. He was elected NABJ’s vice president-print in 1999 and secretary in 1995 and 1997. In 1996, he helped lead the conversion of the trade publication, the NABJ Journal, from a newsletter to a magazine. In 2001, he served as managing editor of “Committed to the Cause: Salute to NABJ’s Presidents,” a 44-page book detailing the association’s first quarter century, and as project manager of the revamped Web site, www.nabj.org.

Lowe's 18-year journalism career includes stints at several small, mid-size and major newspapers across the country. Lowe has covered a gamut of assignments - from the Miss America Pageant to political campaigns, from senseless murders to small-town festivals, from profiling civic advocates to exposing greedy developers. Along the way, fairness, integrity, professionalism and diversity have become his hallmarks.

A staff writer at Newsday in Queens, N.Y., since Feb. 2000, Lowe covers criminal courts in Queens. In 2002, while covering a high-profile death-penalty trial, he helped report and write what became a four-day series about men wrongfully convicted of murder. The series, “The Wronged Men,” was a 2003 Deadline Awards finalist.

A former adjunct professor at Norfolk State University, Lowe has also worked as a reporter and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Virginian-Pilot, The Record (N.J.), The Press of Atlantic City, The Milwaukee Community Journal and Amateur Sports magazine. He was an Excel Award finalist three years in a row in the “Salute to Excellence” competition held by the Hampton Roads Black Media Professionals (HRBMP) in Norfolk.

Lowe is a big supporter of NABJ chapters. He is a past president of the Garden State (N.J.) Association of Black Journalists (GSABJ), a former HRBMP recording secretary, a former member of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, and now a member of the New York Association of Black Journalists (NYABJ).

Lowe is the eldest of six children raised by a single mother. He was president of a black journalism students group and pledged Alpha Phi Alpha before graduating in 1984 as a double major (broadcast journalism and political science) from Marquette University.

An avid sports fan, particularly of teams from Philadelphia, is enrolled in an accredited online certificate program for Web design. He and his wife, Mira, an award-winning news editor at Newsday, live in Brooklyn and worship at Christian Cultural Center.

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