Photographer and Former MTV News Reporter Tabitha Soren Lewis (WSUC ’89)

TABITHA SOREN OUTSIDE HER STUDIO IN BERKELEY CA, 2017
Photo Credit: Lou Noble

Many of our alumni remember Tabitha Soren Lewis as a reporter on MTV throughout the 1990s. She was the recipient of the NYU Distinguished Alumni Award in 1994. She has since become a professional photographer, and in 2017 she published “Fantasy Life: Baseball and the American Dream,” a book of her photos documenting 21 baseball players selected for the Oakland A’s 2002 draft class. We recently caught up with Tabitha who shared her memories of NYU, MTV, and the inspirations behind her photographs.

What’s your favorite memory of NYU?

In my freshman year I was working at Washington Square News on the top floor of the Loeb Student Center and I remember looking down the hall at the students working at the NYU radio station and thinking that they were having more fun. They were wearing leather jackets and had punk rock hair, and Michael Stipe and members of the Sex Pistols were coming in and out of the elevator. I knew that I wanted to be a reporter very early. I worked for the newspaper my freshman year, then I started reading the news for the radio station. I also edited the WNYU magazine.