Jonathan Alter - Life and Career

Life and Career

Alter was raised in a Jewish family in Chicago. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1975 and Harvard University in 1979.

For a decade in the 1980s, Alter was Newsweek's media critic, where he was among the first in the mainstream media to break tradition and hold other news organizations accountable for their coverage, a precursor to the role later played by blogs. When Newsweek launched his wide-ranging column in 1991, it was the first time the magazine allowed regular political commentary in the magazine, other than on the back page. After the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, during which Alter was a consultant to MTV, he was among a small group of reporters and columnists who had regular access to Clinton, though he was far from a reliable supporter, particularly during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "Alter bites me in the ass sometimes, but at least he knows what we're trying to do," Clinton was quoted as saying in the book Media Circus by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz.

Alter gained international notoriety on election night 2000, when on NBC with Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw, he claimed that the election would be settled in court. He was the first pundit to predict the months long recount process.

Two months after the September 11 attacks, Alter wrote an article for Newsweek called "Time to think about torture" which became one of his best known articles. In the column, he suggested that the U.S. might need to "rethink ... old assumptions about law enforcement." Stating that "some torture clearly works," he suggested the nation should "keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation," and consider transferring some prisoners to other countries with less stringent rules on torture.

Alter was a fierce critic of President George W. Bush, emphasizing what he considered Bush's lack of accountability and his position on embryonic stem cell research. Alter, a cancer survivor, has written about his own bout with lymphoma and experience with an autologous adult stem cell transplant. On NBC's Today Show, Alter was the correspondent for several stories about the effect of the Iraq War on returning veterans. The Defining Moment, which was reviewed respectfully, surprised some critics with its analysis which concluded that the United States had come very close to dictatorship before Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, painting him as the savior of American democracy and capitalism. During an interview with 60 Minutes on November 14, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama said he had recently been reading The Defining Moment and hoped to apply some of Roosevelt's strategies that were outlined in the book into his own administration.

In 2009, Alter was the commencement speaker at Western Connecticut State University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. He also has received honorary degrees from Utica College (2008) and Montclair State University (2009).

In April 2011, Alter left Newsweek.