Newsweek Senior Editor to Speak at Williams
WILLIAMSTOWN — Jonathan Alter, columnist and senior editor for Newsweek Magazine, will deliver a lecture on "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Election of 2008" at Williams College on Tuesday, April 29, at 8 p.m., in Griffin Hall, Room 3. The lecture is free and open to the public.Alter's award-winning "Between the Lines" column, which examines politics, media and society, has been a regular part of the magazine since 1991. The 2008 presidential campaign marks the seventh election Alter has covered for Newsweek. Beyond politics and media, he has written extensively over the years about terrorism, anti-Semitism, at-risk children, national service and a wide variety of other issues.
Among his exclusives in the 2008 campaign season are that Barack Obama would seek the presidency, that Mike Huckabee would be a factor in the GOP contest, and that after a quarrel with President Clinton, Sen. Edward Kennedy was likely to endorse Obama.
Alter also is a contributing correspondent for NBC News and broke the story of the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach Country, Fla., on that network on election night in 2000.
In the 1980s as media critic at Newsweek, he was a pioneer in the movement to hold mainstream publications accountable for their reporting. He also conceived of the magazine's "Conventional Wisdom" column, which uses iconic arrows to gauge trends and events nationwide.
Alter joined Newsweek as an associate editor in the Nation section in 1983, and became media critic the following year. He was named a senior writer in 1987 and a senior editor in 1991. Before joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor at The Washington Monthly. He has also been a freelance writer for such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, Slate, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
His numerous honors include the National Headliner Awards for Special Column on One Subject for a series of columns on life after the Sept. 11 attacks, the 1987 Lowell Mellett Award and two New York State Bar Association Media Awards.
Alter received his bachelor of arts from Harvard University.
