Chris Fitzsimon

Chris Fitzsimon is the Director and Publisher of The Newsroom, a growing network of state-based news outlets currently in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, with a national bureau in Washington, D.C.

Previously Chris was the Founder and Director of NC Policy Watch, – a progressive news and commentary outlet that is a special project of the North Carolina Justice Center. Fitzsimon also wrote the daily Fitzsimon File and delivered a daily radio commentary broadcast on WRAL-FM in Raleigh.

Before NC Policy Watch, Fitzsimon was was also the Founder and for nine years the Executive Director of the Common Sense Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina.

He is also a frequent speaker across North Carolina on government and politics. Fitzsimon has been quoted in scores of national publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Nation, and Columbia Journalism Review.

Chris was an award-winning television news reporter for nine years, including four years at North Carolina Public Television and three years at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, where he covered government and politics. In 1991 he left WRAL to become Special Assistant for Policy and Communications for House Speaker Dan Blue. He left Speaker Blue in the spring of 1994 and founded the Common Sense Foundation later that summer. Fitzsimon, has a B.A. in Journalism from UNC-Chapel Hill.