You Talkin to Me

1
You Talkin to Me?

• Journalists and their Audience

2
Richard Rodriguez

• Richard is an editor at Pacific News Service, and
  a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine, U.S.
  News World Report, and the Sunday "Opinion"
  section of the Los Angeles Times. He has
  published numerous articles in The New York
  Times, The Wall Street Journal, The American
  Scholar, Time, Mother Jones, and The New
  Republic, as well as other publications. He has
  also written three books Brown The Last
  Discovery of AmericaHunger of Memory and Days
  of Obligation An Argument With My Mexican
  Father, as well as two BBC documentaries.
• Richard received a 1997 George Foster Peabody
  Award for his NewsHour Essays on American life.
  The Peabody Award is designed to recognize
  "outstanding achievement in broadcast and cable,"
  and is one of television's highest honors.
• Richard's awards include the Frankel Medal from
  the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
  International Journalism Award from the World
  Affairs Council of California. Richard lives in
  San Francisco.
• http//www.pacificnews.org/contributors/rodriguez/

3
Maureen Dowd

• Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize
  for distinguished commentary, became a columnist
  on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995 after
  having served as a correspondent in the paper's
  Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered
  four presidential campaigns and served as White
  House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On
  Washington," for The New York Times Magazine.
• Ms. Dowd joined The New York Times as a
  metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her
  career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The
  Washington Star, where she later became a sports
  columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature
  writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to
  Time magazine.
• Born in Washington D.C., Ms. Dowd received a B.A.
  degree in English literature from Catholic
  University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973.
  
• http//topics.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/DOWD-BIO.htm
  l

4
David Brooks

• David Brooks's column on the Op-Ed page of The
  New York Times started in September 2003. He has
  been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a
  contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic
  Monthly, and he is currently a commentator on
  "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." He is the author
  of "Bobos In Paradise The New Upper Class and
  How They Got There" and On Paradise Drive How
  We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future
  Tense, both published by Simon Schuster.
• Mr. Brooks joined The Weekly Standard at its
  inception in September 1995, having worked at The
  Wall Street Journal for the previous nine years.
  His last post at the Journal was as op-ed editor.
  Prior to that, he was posted in Brussels,
  covering Russia, the Middle East, South Africa
  and European affairs. His first post at the
  Journal was as editor of the book review section,
  and he filled in for five months as the Journal's
  movie critic.
• Mr. Brooks graduated from the University of
  Chicago in 1983, and worked as a police reporter
  for the City News Bureau, a wire service owned
  jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.
• He is also a frequent analyst on NPRs "All
  Things Considered" and the "Diane Rehm Show." His
  articles have appeared in the The New Yorker, The
  New York Times Magazine, Forbes, the Washington
  Post, the TLS, Commentary, The Public Interest
  and many other magazines. He is editor of the
  anthology "Backward and Upward The New
  Conservative Writing" (Vintage Books).
• http//topics.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/BROOKS-BIO.h
  tml?8qa

5
William Safire

• William Safire, winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize
  for distinguished commentary, joined The New York
  Times in 1973 as a political columnist. He also
  writes a Sunday column, On Language, which has
  appeared in The New York Times Magazine since
  1979. This column on grammar, usage, and
  etymology has led to the publication of 10 books
  and made him the most widely read writer on the
  English language.
• Before joining The Times, Mr. Safire was a senior
  White House speechwriter for President Nixon. He
  had previously been a radio and television
  producer and a U.S. Army correspondent. He began
  his career as a reporter for The New York Herald
  Tribune. From 1955 to 1960, Safire was vice
  president of a public relations firm in New York
  City, then became president of his own firm. He
  was responsible for bringing Mr. Nixon and Nikita
  Khrushchev together in the 1959 Moscow kitchen
  debate. In 1968, he joined the campaign of
  Richard Nixon.
• He is the author of Freedom (1987), a novel of
  Lincoln and the Civil War. His other novels
  include Full Disclosure (1977), Sleeper Spy
  (1995) and Scandalmonger (2000). His other titles
  include a dictionary, a history, anthologies and
  commentaries.
• Mr. Safire was born on Dec. 17, 1929, and
  attended Syracuse University a dropout after two
  years, he returned a generation later to deliver
  the commencement address and is now a trustee.
  Since 1995 he has served as a member of the
  Pulitzer Board. He is married, has two children
  and lives in suburban Washington, D.C.
• http//www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/SAFIRE-BIO.html

6
Molly Ivins

• Mary Tyler "Molly" Ivins (August 30, 1944
  January 31, 2007) was a populist American
  newspaper columnist, political commentator, and
  best-selling author from Austin, Texas.
• Her first newspaper job was in the complaint
  department of the Houston Chronicle, followed by
  the position of, as she put it, "sewer editor,"
  responsible for reporting on the nuts--bolts of
  local city life.
• She went on to the Minneapolis Tribune, where she
  was the first woman police reporter in that city
  and, later, the reporter who covered a beat
  called Movements for Social Change, where she
  notes that she wrote about "militant blacks,
  angry Indians, radical students, uppity women and
  a motley assortment of other misfits and
  troublemakers."
• She left the Tribune to write for the Texas
  Observer from 1970 to 1976. The New York Times,
  concerned that its prevailing writing style was
  too staid and lifeless, hired her away from the
  Observer in 1976, and she wrote for the Times
  until 1982. During her run at the Times, Ivins
  became Rocky Mountain bureau chief, covering nine
  western states, although the writer was known to
  say she was named chief because there was no one
  else in the bureau. Her more colorful style
  clashed with the editors' expectations, and in
  1982, after she wrote about a "community
  chicken-killing festival" and called it a
  "gang-pluck," she was dismissed.
• She then wrote for the Dallas Times Herald from
  1982 until the paper's demise in 1992, moving in
  that year to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which
  was her home paper until 2001, when she became an
  independent journalist. Her column, distributed
  by Creators Syndicate at the end of her life,
  appeared in nearly 400 papers nationwide.
• In 1995, humorist Florence King noted that Ivins
  had on several occasions plagiarized King's work,
  and on one occasion had mis-stated a quotation
  from a King column. Ivins apologized in a letter
  to King, but concluded the letter by writing "you
  sure are a mean b----, aren't you?". King
  published Ivins's letter and King's own reply.
• She was also a board member of the Texas
  Democracy Foundation, which publishes the Texas
  Observer in Austin.
  
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Ivins

7
GEORGE F. WILL

• George F. Will is an ABC News commentator and
  panelist on "This Week with George
  Stephanopoulos." A Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr.
  Will has been a regular contributor to ABC News
  since the premiere of "This Week with David
  Brinkley" in 1981.
• In addition to his work for ABC News, Mr. Will is
  the author of a syndicated column which appears
  twice weekly in more than 475 newspapers. He
  became a contributing editor of Newsweek magazine
  in 1976 and, a year later, was awarded the
  Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.
• From 1973 to 1976 he was the Washington editor of
  National Review. From 1970 to 1972 Mr. Will was
  on the staff of Senator Gordon Allott of
  Colorado.
• Mr. Will has published seven collections of
  columns "The Pursuit of Happiness and Other
  Sobering Thoughts," "The Pursuit of Virtue and
  Other Tory Notions," "The Morning After American
  Successes and Excesses 1981-1986," "Suddenly
  The American Idea Abroad and At Home, 1986-1990,"
  "The Leveling Wind Politics, the Culture and
  Other News, 1990-94," "The Woven Figure
  Conservatism and America's Fabric 1994-1997,"
  and "With A Happy Eye But... America and the
  World, 1997-2002." He has published three books
  of political theory "Statecraft as Soulcraft
  What Government Does" (1983), "The New Season A
  Spectator's Guide to the 1988 Election" (1987)
  and "Restoration Congress, Term Limits and The
  Recovery of Deliberative Democracy" (1992). And
  he has published two books on baseball "Men at
  Work The Craft of Baseball" (1990) and "Bunts
  Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose and Other
  Reflections on Baseball" (1998).
• Mr. Will was born in Champaign, Illinois. He
  graduated from Trinity College in Hartford,
  Connecticut and received a degree from Oxford
  University and a Ph.D. from Princeton. He has
  taught political philosophy at Michigan State
  University, the University of Toronto and Harvard
  University.
• http//abcmedianet.com/shows05/news/correspondents
  /will.shtml

8
Ellen Goodman

• Ellen Goodman is an American original. Her
  abundant talents -- intellect, wit, style, news
  judgment -- set her apart with an élan uniquely
  her own. Her Pulitzer Prize winning commentary
  appears in more than 375 newspapers.
• Goodmans first job was at Newsweek as a
  researcher, at a time when only men became
  writers. She landed a job as a reporter for the
  Detroit Free Press in 1965 and, in 1967, for The
  Boston Globe where she began writing her
  column..
• In 1980, Goodman was awarded the Pulitzer Prize
  for Distinguished Commentary.
  
• Goodmans first book, Turning Points
  (Doubleday, 1979), detailed the effect of the
  changing roles of women on the family. Six
  collections of her columns have been published
  Paper Trail Common Sense in Uncommon Times
  (Simon Schuster, 2004) Close to Home (Simon
  Schuster, 1979) At Large (Summit Books,
  1981) Keeping in Touch (Summit Books, 1985)
  Making Sense (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989)
  and Value Judgments (Farrar Straus Giroux,
  1993). She is also co-author with Patricia
  OBrien of I Know Just What You Mean The Power
  of Friendship in Womens Lives (Simon
  Schuster, 2000).
• Goodmans work has won many other awards,
  including the American Society of Newspaper
  Editors Distinguished Writing Award in 1980. She
  received the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights
  Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil
  Rights in 1988. In 1993, at its Seventh Annual
  Exceptional Merit Media Award Ceremony, The
  National Womens Political Caucus gave her the
  Presidents Award. In 1994, the Womens Research
  Education Institute presented her with their
  American Woman Award.
• http//postwritersgroup.com/archives/good1116.htm

9
Clarence Page

• (born June 2, 1947) is a journalist, syndicated
  columnist and member of the editorial board for
  the Chicago Tribune.
  
• He is an occasional panelist on The McLaughlin
  Group, a regular contributor of essays to
  NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, host of several
  documentaries on the Public Broadcasting Service,
  and an occasional commentator on National Public
  Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday. Page often
  appears as a political analyst on the Chris
  Matthews Show. He also appeared in the film
  Rising Sun (1993), playing himself as a talk show
  panel member. Page's achievements came despite an
  undiagnosed case of ADD, the effects of which he
  recounts in a chapter in Positively ADD.
• Page was born in Dayton, Ohio. A 1965 graduate of
  Middletown High School in Middletown, Ohio, he
  began his journalism career as a freelance writer
  and photographer for the Middletown Journal and
  Cincinnati Enquirer at the age of 17. Page
  received his Bachelor of Science degree in
  journalism from Ohio University in 1969, where he
  was the commencement speaker in 1993 and 2001. He
  has received honorary doctorates from Columbia
  College in Chicago, Lake Forest College, and
  Nazareth College in Rochester.
• Page served in the United States military during
  the Vietnam War. After graduating college and
  taking a position with the Chicago Tribune, he
  was drafted in 1969 after only six months with
  the paper. He found himself assigned as an Army
  journalist with the 212th Artillery Group at Fort
  Lewis, Washington until 1971, when his obligation
  ended and he made his way back to the Tribune in
  1971.
• He has been married since 1987 to the former Lisa
  Johnson of Chicago. They have one child, Grady
  Page, and reside in Takoma Park, Maryland.
  
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Page