Steven Thrasher facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Steven Thrasher
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Thrasher at the 2022 Texas Book Festival
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| Alma mater | New York University |
| Occupation | Journalist, academic |
| Employer | Northwestern University |
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Notable work
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The Viral Underclass |
| Title | Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting |
Steven William Thrasher, born around 1978, is an American journalist and university professor. In 2019, he became the first Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting. He also became an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. In 2012, he received the Journalist of the Year award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. His book, The Viral Underclass, was published in 2022.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Steven Thrasher was born in Ventura, California, around 1978. He grew up in Oxnard, California. His parents, Margaret and William "Bill" Thrasher, came from Nebraska. They married in Iowa in 1958 because Nebraska laws at that time did not allow their marriage.
Thrasher went to Oxnard High School, where his father was a teacher. He finished high school in 1995. Later, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
His Career as a Journalist
After college, Thrasher worked as a script assistant for the TV show Saturday Night Live from 1999 to 2001. He then worked on the teams for several films. Starting in 2007, he collected personal stories for the StoryCorps Project. In 2009, he became a writer for The Village Voice newspaper.
In 2012, Thrasher left The Village Voice. He continued working as a freelance journalist. At the same time, he studied for his doctorate degree in American studies at New York University, which he completed in 2019. Thrasher's articles have also appeared in well-known publications like The Guardian, Scientific American, The New York Times, and BuzzFeed.
Important Stories He Covered
In 2014, Thrasher began looking into the story of Michael Johnson. Johnson was a young Black gay man who faced legal issues near St. Louis. Thrasher wrote a series of articles arguing that Johnson's legal case had unfair racial elements. In 2016, Johnson's conviction was overturned. Thrasher's reporting highlighted how certain laws could unfairly affect people. His work helped him be recognized by Out magazine in 2019.
Thrasher also reported from St. Louis in 2014. He covered the protests that happened after Michael Brown's death in Ferguson.
Awards and Recognition
Steven Thrasher has received several awards for his journalism. In 2012, he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year award. He also received the Al Neuharth Award for Innovation in Investigative Journalism in 2015.
In 2017, he was honored by the American Sociological Association's journal Contexts. In 2019, he received a $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for his creative work and support of free expression.
His Work at Northwestern University
In 2019, Thrasher became the first Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting. He also became an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
In 2019, as a student speaker at NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Thrasher spoke about his support for a movement against the government in Israel. The university president, Andrew Hamilton, said Thrasher's comments were not in the speech he had submitted for review.
In July 2024, Thrasher and three other people from Northwestern University were arrested. They were charged with obstructing law enforcement during a protest on campus in April 2024. These charges were later dropped on July 19, 2024. Thrasher was briefly suspended from teaching while the university looked into complaints about his journalistic fairness. He was reinstated in January 2025. In March 2025, Northwestern University decided not to offer Thrasher a permanent teaching position. He plans to appeal this decision. He is scheduled to stop teaching at Northwestern University in August 2026.
About His Book: The Viral Underclass
In August 2022, Thrasher published his book, The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. It was published by Celadon Books, part of Macmillan. In the book, Thrasher shares different stories. He argues that social differences can make health problems worse for groups like people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBT people.
The book received a very positive review from Publishers Weekly. Jennifer Latson, writing for The Boston Globe, called it an "engaging, enraging read." In Nature, Jennifer Hochschild wrote that Thrasher is an excellent investigator. She noted that readers would understand how and why the stories developed, feeling strong emotions while reading.
