Jonathan R. Donnellan

Jonathan R. Donnellan is senior vice president and co-general counsel of Hearst, a leading global diversified media, information and services company with more than 360 businesses. He shares responsibility for the day-to-day management of the Office of General Counsel, which provides legal services to all of Hearst’s businesses around the world. He also maintains an active litigation practice.

Prior to joining Hearst, Donnellan was vice president and deputy general counsel for the New York Daily News, U.S. News & World Report and two other media companies concurrently. Previously, he was assistant general counsel of CNN, where he was the lead newsroom and litigation counsel for CNN globally, and received an honorary National Headliner Award as counsel to the CNN Investigative Team, which won first place for its reporting. He spent his first decade of law practice as a litigator at Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

Donnellan is a member of the faculty of the Practicing Law Institute. He has also long been an adjunct law professor, teaching a variety of classes, most recently the seminar “The First Amendment and the Press” at Columbia Law School. He is a member of the board of the New York University Law Alumni Mentoring Program (LAMP). Previously, he was chair of the New York City Bar Association’s Communications and Media Law Committee and the American Bar Association’s First Amendment and Media Litigation Committee, and he is a former member of the governing committee of the ABA forum on communications law.

Donnellan received a bachelor’s degree in English and a law degree from New York University.