USC Annenberg Professor Explains How Coverage of Politics and Politicians Has Evolved
Rachel Ramos interviews award-winning journalist/author/filmmaker and USC senior lecturer Richard Reeves.
Richard Reeves, Senior Lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, is an author and syndicated columnist who has made a number of award-winning documentary films. His ninth book, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, was chosen by Time magazine as the Best Non-Fiction Book of 1993. His other best-selling books include Convention and American Journey: Traveling with Tocqueville in Search of Democracy in America. His twice-weekly column has appeared for the past two decades in more than 160 newspapers in the United States, including The Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Baltimore Sun.
Reeves’ most recent books are Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House (2010), Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of The Berlin Airlift-June 1948-May 1949 (2010), A Force of Nature: The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford (2007), President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (2006), President Nixon: Alone in the White House (2001). He is the 1998 recipient of the Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association for significant contributions to the understanding of American politics. Reeves is also the author of What the People Know: Freedom and the Press, 1998; Family Travels: Around the World in Thirty Days, 1997; The Reagan Detour, 1985; Passage to Peshawar, 1983; Jet Lag, 1981; and A Ford, not a Lincoln, 1975.
A former chief political correspondent of The New York Times, Reeves has been an editor and columnist for New York Magazine and Esquire. For six years, he wrote a column from Europe for Travel & Leisure magazine. He was named the Regents Professor of Political Science at UCLA in 1992. He has taught political writing at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Reeves has also made six television films and has 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 was the co-host of NBC magazine show “Sunday” from 1971 to 1976. He is married to Catherine O’Neill, director of the Washington office of the United Nations and founder of the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. They have five children.
