William Finnegan - Journalism Career

Journalism Career

Finnegan’s experience in South Africa transformed him from a novelist to a political journalist. His first short piece, about his experience living in Sri Lanka, was published in Mother Jones in 1979. Finnegan began contributing to The New Yorker in 1984 and has been a staff writer there since 1987. He has also contributed to Harper's and The New York Review of Books, among other publications.

Finnegan contributed a two-part series for the New Yorker in 1992 entitled "Playing Doc's Games." A surfer himself, Finnegan writes about the local surf scene in San Francisco revolving around Ocean Beach and Dr. Mark Renneker ("Doc") as well as Finnegan's own personal experiences. A remarkable piece of writing, it is widely considered to be one of the best pieces of journalism on surfing.

Finnegan’s next two books grew out of assignments for The New Yorker. In 1986, he was sent to Johannesburg, where he followed black reporters who gathered information for white reporters during Apartheid. This led to the 1988 publication of Dateline Soweto: Travels with Black South African Reporters. A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique, published in 1992, grew out of a series of correspondences about the war-torn nation for the magazine, and Finnegans own travels throughout that war-torn nation. 1998 saw the publication of Finnegan’s most recent work, Cold New World: Growing Up in a Harder Country, which deals with the bleak lives of American teenagers in spite of the United States’ economic affluence. It was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1999.

In the July 20th, 2009 issue of The New Yorker, Finnegan profiled Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona and his role in the conflict over immigration in that border state. In the May 31st, 2010 issue, he reported from Michoacan state in Mexico on the rise of the "La Familia" drug gang and the increasing social and political instability in Mexico. His "Talk of the Town" comment on "Borderlines," which addresses the U.S. political stalemate over immigration reform, appeared in the magazine's issue for July 26, 2010.