Bill Kovach was editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, and curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism fellowship program at Harvard. He was founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.

Tom Rosenstiel is executive director of the American Press Institute, founder of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a former media critic for the Los Angeles Times, and chief congressional correspondent for Newsweek. He and Kovach have written two other books together, Warp Speed and Blur.