Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television analyst. In May, 2011, Alter began writing a weekly column that appears on Fridays for Bloomberg View, a new commentary site housed under Bloomberg News. He spent 28 years at Newsweek, where he was a longtime senior editor and wrote hundreds of columns and features on a wide variety of subjects. He is also an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.His 2010 book, "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," now out in paperback with a new epilogue, went to #4 on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and was one of the Times' "Notable Books" of the year. "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," published in 2006, was also a bestseller.
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NEWS
- The Promise is out in Paperback. Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local bookstore.
- New Bloomberg News Column
BIO
The 2008 campaign marked the seventh presidential election Alter covered for Newsweek. He has frequently interviewed American presidents and other world leaders, regularly breaks news and has authored more than 50 Newsweek cover stories on everything from Bill Clinton's first interview after leaving the presidency, to Barack Obama's first-ever magazine cover, to Alter's personal story of living with cancer, to the history of assassinations in America. Beyond politics and media, he has written extensively over the years about education, fiscal policy, terrorism, anti-Semitism, at-risk children, national service and a wide variety of other issues.
In his role at NBC News, Alter has appeared on all NBC broadcasts including "TODAY," "NBC Nightly News," "Meet the Press," and NBC News specials. On MSNBC, he is a regular guest on "Hardball," "Morning Joe," "Andrea Mitchell Reports," "The Ed Show" and other programs. One of his best-known scoops came on Election Night, 2000, when Alter went on the air to break the story about confusing "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach County, Florida that shaped the outcome of the election.
Alter has earned honorary degrees from Western Connecticut State University and Montclair State University. His many awards for his political writing include first prize from the National Headliner Awards for Special Column on One Subject for a series of columns on life after 9/11. He was also part of the teams of Newsweek reporters and editors awarded the prestigious National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1993, 2002, 2004. He received the John Bartlow Martin Award in 2001 for his reporting on the death penalty and first place for commentary in 2007 for a story on the legacy of Martin Luther King from the National Association of Black Journalists. Alter also received the 1994 Clarion Award from Women in Communications for Best Magazine Opinion Column, and the 1993 National Headliner Award for Consistently Outstanding Feature Column.
He received the first prize Book Award from the New Jersey Council of the Humanities for "The Defining Moment" and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "The Promise." His many awards for media criticism include the 1987 Lowell Mellett Award and two New York State Bar Association Media Awards. In 1995, Alter was selected as one of the nation's most influential media critics in a survey of leading media executives and scholars published by the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. He also won the 1987 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting, and a Mentoring USA Award for encouraging mentoring. Alter was a Fellow of the Japan Society in Tokyo (1993),the Ferris Visiting Professor of Press and Politics at Princeton University (1997), and the Rhodes Visiting Professor at Arizona State University(2009).
Alter joined Newsweek as an associate editor in the Nation section in March 1983, and became media critic the following year. He was named a senior writer in February 1987 and a senior editor in September 1991. For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also freelanced articles for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Slate and The New York Times.
A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. Besides "The Promise" and "The Defining Moment," Alter is the author of "Between the Lines: A View Inside American Politics, Media and Culture" (a collection of 20 years of his Newsweek columns), and the coeditor of "Inside the System" (a collection of Washington Monthly articles). He is married to Emily Lazar. They live in New Jersey with their children, Charlotte, Tommy and Molly.
LECTURING
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