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 America;Hunger 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.html

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 NPR’s "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.html?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 populistAmerican newspaper columnist, political commentator, and best-sellingauthor 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. • Goodman’s 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. • Goodman’s 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 O’Brien of “I Know Just What You Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women’s Lives” (Simon & Schuster, 2000). • Goodman’s 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 Women’s Political Caucus gave her the President’s Award. In 1994, the Women’s 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