About Richard Reeves
Richard Reeves, Senior Lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, is an author and syndicated columnist whose column has appeared in more than 100 newspapers since 1979. A new column also appears on Yahoo! News each Friday. He has received dozens of awards for his work in print, television and film.
Educated as a mechanical engineer, Richard Reeves began his career in journalism at the age of 23, founding the Phillipsburg Free Press in Phillipsburg, N.J. He has been a correspondent for the Newark Evening News and the New York Herald Tribune and was the Chief Political Correspondent of The New York Times. He has also written for numerous other publications, becoming National Editor and Columnist for Esquire and New York Magazine along the way. Named a "literary lion" by the New York Public Library, Reeves has won a number of print journalism awards and has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist and juror.
In 1975, Reeves published his first book, A Ford, not a Lincoln. His President Kennedy: Profile of Power is now considered the authoritative work on the 35th president, has won several national awards and was named the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993 by Time and Book of the Year by Washington Monthly.
Reeves has also worked extensively on television and in film. He was Chief Correspondent on "Frontline". He has made six television films and won all of television's major documentary awards: the Emmy for "Lights, Camera . . . Politics!" for ABC News; the Columbia-DuPont Award for "Struggle for Birmingham" for PBS; and the George Foster Peabody Award for "Red Star over Khyber" for PBS. He has also appeared in two feature films, "Dave" and "Seabiscuit".
In 1998, he won the Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association for distinguished contributions to the understanding of American politics. He was the Goldman Lecturer on American Civilization and Government at the Library of Congress that year; the lectures were published by Harvard University Press under the title What the People Know: Freedom and the Press.
In 2007, W.W. Norton will publish his biography — and re-creation of the experiments — of Ernest Rutherford, the Nobel prizewinning physicist, who was born on the frontier of New Zealand in 1871 and went on to become the greatest experimental scientist of his time, discovering the unimagined subatomic world we now know and then splitting the atom he first envisioned. He is currently working in the United States and Europe on a history of the Berlin Airlift, scheduled for publication in 2008.
Positions
- Chief Correspondent, Frontline, PBS, 1981-1984.
- Panelist, We Interrupt This Week, PBS, 1978
- National Editor and Columnist, Esquire, 1976-1980.
- National Editor and Columnist, New York Magazine, 1971-1976.
- Chief Political Correspondent, The New York Times, 1966-1971.
- Correspondent, The New York Herald Tribune, 1965-66.
- Correspondent, The Newark Evening News, 1963-65.
- Editor, Phillipsburg (N.J.) Free Press, 1961-63.
- Engineer, Ingersoll-Rand Co., 1960-61.
Publications
- President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Simon and Schuster, 2001
- What The People Know: Freedom and the Press, Harvard University, 1998
- Do the Media Govern?, Sage, 1997 (with Shanto Iyengar)
- Family Travels: Around the World in 30 Days, Andrews and McMeel, 1997
- Character Above All, Vol. 4, Simon and Schuster Audio, 1996
- Running in Place, Andrews and McMeel, 1996
- President Kennedy: Profile of Power, Simon and Schuster, 1993
- The Reagan Detour, Simon and Schuster, 1984
- Passage to Peshawar, Simon and Schuster, 1983
- American Journey; Travelling with Tocqueville, Simon and Schuster, 1982
- Jet Lag, Andrews and McMeel, 1981
- Convention, Harcourt Brace, 1977
- Old Faces of 1976, Harper and Row, 1976
- A Ford, not a Lincoln, Harcourt Brace, 1975
- Hundreds of magazine articles on public affairs for most major American magazines, including particularly New York Magazine, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine.
Films
- "Plowing Up a Storm", PBS, 1986
- "Red Star Over Afghanistan", PBS, 1984
- "Struggle for Birmingham", PBS, 1984
- "American Journey", PBS, 1983
- Lights, Camera . . . Politics", ABC, 1980
- "TV on Trial", PBS, 1978
Awards
- Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association, 1998
- Goldman Lecturer, Library of Congress, 1997
- PEN Non-Fiction Book of the Year, 1993
- Washington Monthly Book of the Year, 1993
- Christophers Book of the Year, 1983
- Columbia-Peabody Award, 1984
- George Foster Peabody Award, 1984
- Christopher Award, 1982
- National Emmy, 1980
- Silver Gavel, American Bar Association, 1978
- Literary Lion, New York Public Library
- Lifetime Achievement Award, National Society of Newspaper Columnists
- Honorary Degrees: Stevens Institute of Technology; Drew University; St. Joseph's College
Teaching
- Visiting Professor of Journalism, Annenberg School for Communication at USC
- Regents Professor of Political Science, UCLA 1992-94
- Political Writing, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 1974-1976
- Hunter College, Government, 1970-1972
Education
- ME, Stevens Institute of Technology,1960
TV/Film Appearances
- Seabiscuit, as Radio Reporter Joe, 2003
- Dave, as Himself, 1993
Links
- USC Annenberg School for Communication
- Reeves Blog at USC Annenberg School for Communication
- Richard Reeves at Simon and Schuster
- Richard Reeves at Amazon.com
- Richard Reeves at Barnes and Noble
- Richard Reeves at Yahoo! News Op-Ed
- Richard Reeves at Universal Press Syndicate
- Richard Reeves' Personal Papers at JFK Library
Latest Column
Businessmen Of The World, Unite!
LOS ANGELES — In the early 1980s, in a book called "American Journey," I calculated that American corporate chief executive officers were making 30 to 40 times as much as they paid average production workers. Looking back at that, I see that I was surprised to learn that that ratio had increased from 25-to-1 in 1970 — and that in other developed countries the ratio was closer to 10-to-1.
Column Archive
The Summoning Of Our Discontent
NEW YORK — Glenn Beck does not like to be compared with Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest from Detroit. Coughlin, whose weekly show was listened to by as many as 40 million Americans in the 1930s, began as a Roosevelt New Dealer and ended up a raving anti-Semite.
A Christian Republic Against Islamic Republics?
NEW YORK — Speechmaking has never been among Mayor Michael Bloomberg's many talents. But he rose to the occasion last Tuesday when he chose to defend the rights of Muslims to build a community center and mosque a couple of blocks from what was the site of the World Trade Center before Sept. 11, 2001.
Aging: The Issue Of The Century
LOS ANGELES — If you think the Mel Gibson tapes are the biggest story out here, you would be wrong.
Ask Not For Whom Bell Toils ...
BELL, Calif. — This little city was a pleasant place to be last Sunday morning. There are nice gardens around small bungalows and four-family apartment buildings. Hundreds of kids in snappy soccer uniforms, their parents behind carrying coolers of food and drink, were headed for the perfectly groomed turf near City Hall.
Obama So Far: Good Job!
LOS ANGELES — This is about what I think, expressed cleverly by another columnist, Froma Harrop of the Providence Journal:
A Congressman Reaches Out -- And Ducks!
RESEDA, Calif. — Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from the 27th District of California in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, is a congressman who is obviously not afraid of his constituents. Many are these days, but Sherman takes out advertisements in local newspapers urging people to come and reason with (or yell at) him at "Town Hall" meetings.
Naturalized On The Fourth Of July
LOS ANGELES — Among the charges leveled against King George III on July 4, 1776, in the Declaration of Independence was this one:
The Special Relationship Is Very Special
WASHINGTON — The 300th British soldier was killed in Afghanistan last week, which means that, proportionately, Great Britain is paying a higher price in manpower and money out there. That's 300 dead in a 10,000-troop commitment compared with the United States' 1,126 deaths with a commitment of more than 94,000 troops right now.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Conspiracy Theories
WASHINGTON — Last Saturday morning, Mike Allen's Politico Playbook, the early-morning blog Washington whisperers wake up to, began this way:
The California Winners: Corporate Power
LOS ANGELES — You can't fool all the people all the time, only about 48 percent. That, rather than the triumph of women billionaires, may be the abiding lesson of California's spring elections this year.
Where Does The Buck Stop?
LOS ANGELES — President Obama, in an impossible position, decided to take a page from the Harry Truman-John F. Kennedy playbook as oil fouled the Gulf of Mexico and the second year of his presidency.
The Republican Political Bubble
LOS ANGELES — In a rather charming video at randpaul2010.com, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Kentucky, Rand Paul himself, a libertarian by birthright, says that he was not named for Ayn Rand. The writer is acclaimed as a prophet by many libertarians, although she once said she would rather vote for the Marx Brothers than a libertarian.
Pentagon Papers II
NEW YORK — Henry Fairlie, the British-American contrarian who wrote for The New Republic and The Washington Post, among many others, derided the publication of the Pentagon Papers as nothing more than a summary of what Americans already knew about the war in Vietnam. To prove his point in those pre-Google days, Fairlie spent hour after hour plowing through newspaper, magazine and government archives, finding stories and public documents revealing the same information the Defense Department was classifying during the 1960s.
Events Are In The Saddle
NEW YORK — Let us now praise famous cliches.
California's Stimulus Package: Meg Whitman
LOS ANGELES — There is a sweet little proposition on this year's California ballot, 15 by number. Authored by state Sen. Loni Hancock, a Democrat from Berkeley, Proposition 15 would institute public financing for one state office, secretary of state.
Are We A Nation Of Crooks?
LOS ANGELES — In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty. OK, so Bernie Madoff is a criminal. But a lot of other people on Wall Street and beyond are only crooks — so far.
