Pamela Newkirk is a New York University professor of journalism and award-winning journalist who has written extensively about diversity in the news media and art world. Her first book, Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media (NYU Press) examined the tumultuous entry of African American journalists into mainstream journalism. The book, based on archival research and interviews with more than one hundred journalists across the country, won a National Press Club Award for media criticism and continues to be widely adopted by colleges and universities.

Her most recent book, Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga (HarperCollins) uncovered the story of the young African who in 1906 was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo monkey house. The book, based almost exclusively on archival research, was included on a number of Best of 2015 lists, including NPR's, the San Francisco Chronicle's and the Boston Globe's and won an NAACP Image Award for literature and the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award. The book has also been optioned for film and stage by producer Scott Rudin. Newkirk's articles and reviews are regularly published in major media, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, andthe Chronicle of Higher Education.