Michael A. Davis

Journalist Michael A. Davis was a senior editor and “Family Page” columnist for TV Guide, coordinating, editing, and writing major feature and cover projects for America’s largest circulating weekly. Throughout his career, Davis has held various top editorial leadership and creative roles at newspapers, magazines, digital news sites, and broadcasting outlets in New York, Chicago, and Baltimore. During that time, he was a sports broadcasting columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times. He is the author of the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street," and a co-executive producer of the documentary film adapted from his book, which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Davis is currently working on two non-fiction books.

Davis regularly contributes freelance writing and photography to regional and national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Parents magazine. Two of his enterprise features written in the 1980s were published in Best Sports Stories, the hardbound anthology collections of the best in American sports writing and photography. He also delivered a TEDx talk titled "How Sesame Street Has Changed the World."

Davis spent a year at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow, one of 12 American journalists chosen for the open-ended sabbatical year of reflection and study. He received a Master of Science degree in Journalism with highest honors from Northwestern University, where he later taught as an adjunct professor at the Medill School of Journalism. He dedicated a year of service to Head Start, teaching disadvantaged pre-school children in rural New York State, and received a Congressional Medal of Merit for Leadership for service completed at Rogers High School in his hometown on Newport, Rhode Island. He has served on the board of directors for the Society of Friends of Touro Synagogue, a national historic shrine, and on the national board of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. He also served on the board of the Maryland Committee for Children.