Hendrik Hertzberg has been one of the most influential opinion writers in and around Washington for decades. Most of his career has been spent at the home of the monocle and the top hat (The New Yorker), but he’s also had two stints as editor of The New Republic, during the second of which he led the publication to three National Magazine Awards.
Hertzberg returned to The New Yorker in 1992, and is now senior editor and staff writer (mostly of the Comment section in Talk of the Town). He won yet one more National Magazine Award for his opinion writing in 2006. He’s also worked as a speechwriter for President Carter and has done a pair of tours as a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has three books to his credit, including the 2009 reissue of his 1976 prefiguring of data journalism and visualization, One Million.
The other thing to know about Hertzberg is that he is one of those writers on whose work other writers take notes. Ta-Nehisi Coates and he will talk about how writing opinion can and/or should be informed by what practices and habits of journalism — and much more, including, no doubt, something about what to make of the current predicaments of American politics.
Moderated by Tom Levenson. Part of the Writer’s Series of Comparative Media Studies/Writing and sponsored by the Angus N. MacDonald Fund.
Written by
Andrew Whitacre