Karen Lincoln Michel is editor of Madison Magazine and is the incoming president of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism Board of Directors. Karen has spent much of her career in newspapers, where she held jobs from reporter to top editor. She is a former executive editor of The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, Louisiana, and an assistant managing editor of the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Karen started in newspapers at the La Crosse Tribune and went on to The Dallas Morning News in Texas. From 1987 to 2005, she was a part-owner of News From Indian Country, a bi-monthly newspaper published in northern
Wisconsin. She has written extensively about Native American issues as a freelancer and was a columnist for The New York Times Syndicate.

Karen is a past president of UNITY: Journalists for Diversity and a past president of the Native American Journalists Association. Karen has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Stout and a master’s degree from Marquette University. She is a member of the Ho-Chunk tribe in Wisconsin.