COLLEGE PARK — The University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism has hired award-winning journalist and alum Deborah Barfield Berry ’85 as the new director of its Capital News Service Annapolis bureau and named Christi Parsons the new director of the CNS D.C. bureau, Dean Rafael Lorente announced Wednesday.
Berry replaces Parsons, who will take over as D.C. bureau chief in January, following the retirement of director James Carroll.
Capital News Service is Merrill College’s student-powered news organization with bureaus and news teams in Washington, D.C, Annapolis, College Park and Baltimore. The bureaus are staffed by students and managed by full-time faculty members with distinguished careers as professional journalists.
Berry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, a 2023 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a member of the Merrill College Hall of Fame. A former national correspondent for USA TODAY, she focused on voting rights, civil rights and politics. She will now direct Merrill College students in their daily coverage of the Maryland State House and issues important to Marylanders.
She has spent most of her journalism career in Washington, D.C., where she has covered Congress and national politics. She serves as president of the board for the Washington Press Club Foundation. Berry’s journalism career includes reporting for Gannett News Service, Newsday, Knight Ridder News Service, The Providence Journal, the Times Herald-Record and The Star Democrat.
Parsons had been director of the CNS Annapolis bureau since January 2024. She will replace Carroll, who retired after 10 years as CNS’ D.C. bureau director.
In her new role, Parsons will lead Merrill College students’ coverage of Capitol Hill, especially when it comes to its impact on Maryland residents and its importance to a healthy democracy. In addition to leading D.C. coverage, Parsons will work to expand collaboration between CNS and the college’s award-winning Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, with an emphasis on impactful enterprise stories, data journalism and artificial intelligence innovations.
Parsons has been a journalist for more than 30 years, reporting all over the U.S. and from 32 countries. She previously was enterprise editor and assistant managing editor at CNN; a senior editor at The Atlantic; a White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times; a national political writer, state and local reporter for The Chicago Tribune; and a local reporter for several newspapers around the South.
“Our Capital News Service bureaus in Annapolis and Washington remain in excellent hands under the leadership of Deborah and Christi,” Lorente said. “We are excited to add Deborah’s experience to our faculty following an amazing career with USA Today and other major news outlets. Christi has done an exceptional job leading our Annapolis bureau, and our students and Marylanders will benefit from her expertise from decades covering D.C. and the White House.”
Berry was part of a Newsday team that won a 1997 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800. She won a 2025 National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award and many other NABJ awards over the years. She was also part of a team that won several awards for the USA TODAY project, "1619: Searching for Answers," and was the lead reporter and creator of "Seven Days of 1961," an award-winning multimedia civil rights project.
The native of Brooklyn, New York, was previously a writing coach at Merrill College and taught a news writing and reporting course at The George Washington University’s School of Media & Public Affairs. She is also a volunteer with the Washington Association of Black Journalists urban high school journalism workshop.
Parsons has covered presidential campaigns since the 1990s, and was one of the longest-serving chroniclers of the rise and presidency of Barack Obama, covering him from the beginning of his term in the Illinois Senate and throughout his time in the White House.
In 2015, Parsons was president of the White House Correspondents' Association. She serves on the board of MASTHEAD, an alumni organization that supports student journalists of color at the University of Alabama. In 2024, she was inducted into the University of Alabama College of Communication & Information Sciences Hall of Fame. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a master's from Yale Law School.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land, Communications Manager
joshland@umd.edu