Celeste Katz

Overview

Celeste Katz — who publishes under the byline Celeste Katz Marston — is an American political journalist whose career moved from 15 years of New York political reporting to running a nonprofit local newspaper. She is editor-in-chief of The Concord Bridge, the nonprofit weekly newspaper of Concord, Massachusetts, a post she took in April 2025 after joining the paper as news editor in July 2023 (bio, The Concord Bridge). Before that she spent more than 15 years at the New York Daily News, then moved through Mic, Newsweek and Glamour; she co-hosted the 2016 election podcast “Special Relationship,” was a 2022 Mirror Award finalist for her Nieman Reports writing, and has worked in radio for both WBAI FM New York and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Poynter, Newhouse).

From Providence to the Daily News (1995-2015)

Katz launched her reporting career at The Providence Journal, where she worked from May 1995 to March 2000 covering government, law enforcement, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard installations, social services and education, and wrote a “Culture Spy” pop culture column for the paper’s statewide lifestyles section (résumé). She graduated from Brown University with a BA in International Relations (foreign policy, diplomacy and global security), where she was executive editor — and later an alumni trustee — of The Brown Daily Herald and a two-term president of Slavic House (bio). Her résumé also lists early reporting internships at The Washington Times, The Washington Monthly, The Roanoke Times and The Atlantic (résumé).

In April 2000 she joined the New York Daily News as a political correspondent and columnist, a tenure that ran to September 2015 and spanned four presidential, four gubernatorial and four mayoral election cycles (résumé, Politicon). Her assignments included the City Hall and State Capitol bureaus, and she ran the paper’s “Daily Politics” blog; outside politics she covered education, crime, general assignment and features, and specialized in liveblog reporting and anchoring (bio). After leaving the Daily News she spent October to December 2015 as a correspondent for The Boston Globe, contributing freelance 2016-election coverage through standalone stories and liveblogs (résumé).

Mic, “Special Relationship,” and the Newsweek firing (2016-2019)

In January 2016 Katz became senior political correspondent for Mic, covering the 2016 presidential race in breaking stories and analysis and across multimedia formats including Facebook Live and Periscope (résumé). While at Mic she co-hosted “Special Relationship,” a pop-up podcast with The Economist that examined the election from a global perspective; Poynter readers ranked it among the best political journalism of the 2016 cycle, with Katz hosting alongside The Economist’s John Prideaux (Poynter).

From September 2017 to February 2018 she was a New York-based senior political writer for Newsweek, covering the White House, national affairs and voting rights; her investigations included the workings of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and an examination of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s travel practices that sparked a federal inquiry (résumé). In February 2018 she was dismissed along with editor-in-chief Bob Roe and executive news director Kenneth Li. The New York Times reported that the purge targeted employees involved in coverage of the company’s financial and legal troubles: Katz had reported on Newsweek’s affairs, including a January 18 raid by the Manhattan district attorney’s office that seized 18 computer servers, while two other reporters involved in the coverage were locked out of their accounts and senior writer Matthew Cooper quit in protest (New York Times). The remaining staff’s subsequent exposé revealed a deep financial relationship between the parent company and the small Christian school Olivet University (Adweek). From April 2018 to January 2019 she was senior political reporter for Condé Nast’s Glamour, covering national politics and the pivotal 2018 midterm elections, including Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings (résumé, bio).

Radio, freelance work, and a Mirror Award nomination (2019-2025)

Katz has been a U.S. correspondent for Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio since December 2007, first appearing from the campaign trail during the 2008 presidential election (résumé, bio). From 2018 she was a correspondent, producer and host for WBAI FM New York, co-hosting the public-affairs program “Driving Forces” and producing and hosting “New York in Crisis,” a 16-installment interview series on the Covid-19 pandemic (bio). She guest-hosted three-hour live programs on Sirius XM’s Patriot, Progress, POTUS and Insight channels in 2016-2018 (résumé).

As a freelancer from January 2019 she reported on politics and the media for Nieman Reports, NBC Asian America and Cosmopolitan, and co-authored the public-service e-book “Is This Any Way to Vote? Vulnerable Voting Machines and the Mysterious Industry Behind Them” (WhoWhatWhy, 2020) with Gabriella Novello (bio, résumé). Her Nieman Reports piece “Covering Extremism: ‘As Exhausting a Beat as It Is Important’” was named a finalist in the 2022 Mirror Awards’ special category for best story on media coverage of the insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” movement (Newhouse). From February 2020 to July 2023 she also worked as an investigator for On Point Investigations, locating and interviewing witnesses for national law firms handling class actions involving securities fraud, whistleblower and antitrust matters (résumé). She has provided political analysis in TV appearances on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, as well as C-SPAN, CBS, NPR and the BBC, and has served as a guest lecturer, panelist and debate questioner for the Columbia, NYU and CUNY journalism schools, NY1, Hofstra and Politicon (bio, résumé, Politicon).

Leading The Concord Bridge

Katz joined The Concord Bridge in July 2023 as news editor and was promoted to managing editor in spring 2024, with the paper announcing the promotion that April (bio, announcement). In April 2025 she became editor-in-chief, overseeing editorial staff and operations for the paper’s broadsheet print edition and digital coverage (bio). The Bridge is a digital-and-print nonprofit that arose after Gannett eliminated nearly all local journalism from its Massachusetts weeklies, competing with Gannett’s Concord Journal for coverage of the town (Media Nation). During her tenure as managing editor and editor-in-chief, the paper won 14 awards from the New England Newspaper & Press Association (bio).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim an exact month for her 2024 promotion to managing editor: her biography page says March 2024 while the paper’s own announcement is dated April 4, 2024, so the profile states “spring 2024.” It does not pin an end year to her WBAI FM New York run, because her résumé lists 2018-2024 while her biography page says 2018-2025. It does not repeat the earlier Columbia Journalism Review framing of the Newsweek firings, since that CJR page now returns a 404 and could not be re-verified this pass; the firing account rests on the New York Times and Adweek reporting instead. Her Nieman Reports extremism piece is a verified 2022 Mirror Award finalist, not a winner, and this profile does not state otherwise.