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
Who is Prepared to be President? Nobody
DENVER — Is Barack Obama prepared to be president? No. Neither is John McCain.
Column Archive
A Vote for Elitism
NEW YORK — If you care about the United States and care about swimming — I happen to care about both — who do you want representing you, Michael Phelps or "one of us"?
Broke and Broken in America
SAG HARBOR, N.Y. — Coming home after working abroad for a couple of months means looking at mountains — of mail. But a lot of it is from banks offering credit cards and from politicians offering salvation, both for a price. You can throw that stuff out without opening any of it.
McCain and Obama: Different Kinds of Men
PARIS — In comments that will be little noted nor long remembered, Barack Obama and John McCain each talked recently about what it was like running for president — and, thus, about what kind of president each would be.
Obama Has Landed Safely
PARIS — This was one of four Obama headlines last Friday in Le Figaro, the conservative newspaper whose favorite conservative is President Nicolas Sarkozy:
"Sarkozy: 'Obama? C'est mon copain!" ('Obama? He's my buddy!")
Mr. Obama Visits the World
PARIS — "Alors," said a gendarme watching President John F. Kennedy step off Air Force One at Orly Airport on May 31, 1961, "he's a real all-American boy, that one."
The Tergiversation of Barack Obama
PARIS — A friend of mine, Don Singleton, a talented writer of impeccable liberal soul, sent me a note last Tuesday — if e-mail can be called a "note" — saying this:
The Year of Living Patriotically
For me at least, celebrating the Fourth of July abroad has always been a special thrill. Whatever your political views and opinions of our leaders of the moment, you feel a physical and vibrant tie to the land of your birth, to the ideas that shaped your own brand of patriotism, your inescapable, prideful Americanism, your bond to other Americans who find themselves in Paris or Stockholm or Peshawar, places I have been on my nation's birthday.
Welcome to Britain's Brave New World
LONDON — A prominent, aggressive and ambitious Conservative politician here, David Davis, recently resigned his seat in Parliament to protest a House of Commons vote extending the time a citizen can be held in jail without charges from 28 to 42 days. A national newspaper poll says 57 percent of respondents support his crusade, but they are almost certainly not telling the truth about that.
Which Side Are You On?
PARIS — Newspapers around the world have reprinted and focused on a story that appeared June 8 in The Observer in London about deep-seated racism in rural America. The headline:
"Democrats in Rural Strongholds Refuse to Give Backing to Obama."
They Love Obama, But They Can't Vote
PARIS — This was a nice place to be when Barack Obama finally nailed down the Democratic nomination for president. I happened to be speaking at the American Library in Paris last Wednesday evening, when someone asked whether I thought Obama's ascension would really change the world's view of the United States.
No Country for Old Governing
NEW YORK — I'm surprised that anyone is surprised that someone who was around President George W. Bush has finally said what has been obvious for years: The 43rd president is an ignorant, stubborn fellow isolated by a bodyguard of lies and liars.
The True Shame of The Iraq War
WASHINGTON — This is what I thought was the American social contract when I was growing up in the land of the free and the home of the brave: You could work your way through college, and if you got a decent job, you could buy a house within a few years.
Republicans Feel Heat of Burning Bush
WASHINGTON — "The Change You Deserve" may sound like scrambled Obama, but it was, in fact, considered as this election-year slogan of the National Republican Congressional Committee. It was rejected when someone noticed that it was also the slogan of a prescription drug called Effexor.
Whatever They Say, It's The Money!
WASHINGTON — When they say, "It's not the money ..." — it's the money!
After all is said and almost done, the numbers that are dragging Hillary Clinton to the end of her campaign are not delegate counts but dollar amounts. She is already more than $20 million in debt, and her campaign is costing something like $1 million a day.
Mc Cain, JFK, and the Health of Presidents
NEW YORK — A lot of smart people have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how and why President John F. Kennedy seemed to evolve from an indecisive fool in launching the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 into the cool and calm commander defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
It's Race, Stupid!
LOS ANGELES — Face it: "Electability" is just another way of saying Barack Obama is black. The overuse of the word right now is a way of assuring voters, Democrat and Republican, that if they do not want or could not abide a black president, they are not alone.
Enough Already With The Fake Debates
LOS ANGELES — This campaign is SO over. It is hard to imagine a debate worse than the Clinton-Obama stand-up on Wednesday night in Philadelphia. In case you missed them between what seemed like a hundred commercials, Sen. Hillary Clinton, the shorter white one, and Sen. Barack Obama, the taller black one, answered (or endured) a road-show production of "Dumb and Dumber," starring Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos.
