Margaret Carlson - Biography

Biography

She is best known for being the first female columnist at TIME magazine. Carlson joined Time in January 1988 from The New Republic, where she was managing editor; in 1994, she became the first female columnist in the magazine's history. Carlson covered four presidential elections for TIME, but in 2005 she left for Bloomberg News where she writes a column.

Miss Carlson spent a year after college working at the U.S. Department of Labor and three other agencies. During that year she lived on Yuma Street in Anacostia with her grandmother Nellie McCreary, a maid at the Hotel Washington (Washington, D.C.) and former nurse's aide at St. Elizabeth's Hospital. After that she taught third grade in Watts, Los Angeles, before joining Nader's raiders. After law school, she was briefly a Federal Trade Commission lawyer under Michael Pertschuk, until the Carter administration ended.

Her journalism career has included stints as Washington bureau chief for Esquire, editor of the short lived Washington Weekly, and editor of Legal Times in Washington. She writes a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. At CNN she was a commentator on Inside Politics, and for 15 years a panelist on The Capital Gang.

Carlson earned a B.A. in English from Penn State University and a law degree from George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C.

Miss Carlson is an accomplished cook, baker, a serious home handyman, and amateur home improvement contractor. She has one daughter and lives in Washington, D.C.