Joshua Benton (born 1975) is an American journalist and writer. He is director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, which he founded in 2008.^[1][2]

Before moving to Harvard, Benton was an investigative reporter and columnist for The Dallas Morning News and a staff writer for The Toledo Blade. He won numerous national awards^[3] for his reporting, most notably on education. He wrote a series of stories on cheating on Texas' state test, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, which led to state reforms and the permanent closure of the Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District.^[4]

He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a Pew Fellow in International Journalism at Johns Hopkins University, and a Jefferson Fellow at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii. At Yale University, he was editor-in-chief of The Yale Herald.^{[citation needed]}