In October, the Trustees of the MDDC Foundation elected long-time editor and current Penn State professor Walter Middlebrook to join the Board. The MDDC Foundation focuses on a robust internship program that brings promising college students to host newsrooms for 8 week paid internships in the summer, with wraparound writing coaching and one on one mentoring.

Walter Middlebrook, the Foster Professor of Practice at The Penn State University, was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in April 2023.

A former assistant managing editor at The Detroit News who led an award-winning metro news desk and investigations team, he joined the Penn State faculty on a full-time basis in the fall 2020.
A senior editor and newsroom manager, his four-decade career also includes editing and working with staff and freelance writers producing stories and special sections in opinion, features, fashion, entertainment, news and business for such publications as The New York Times, Newsday/New York Newsday, USA Today and the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press.

He was among the staff at Newsday that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for spot news.

Middlebrook, who previously taught at Michigan State and Hofstra universities and at the Maynard Institute Editing Program for Minority Journalists, was named a Lifetime Achievement award-winner in 2018 by the Detroit Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

He currently serves as vice president of Rosa Parks Scholarship Foundation board of directors and treasurer of the Detroit Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists; and sits on the boards of the Daily Collegian at The Pennsylvania State University and the Board of Student Publications at the University of Michigan.

A lifetime member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, he also serves as a coach/mentor for the Detroit Writing Room.