“The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril”

Click here to watch Leonard Downie Jr.'s talk on the web

Leonard Downie Jr.
Executive Editor, Washington Post
OSU Alumnus

with special guests John Glenn, William Kirwan & Edward Ray

Leonard Downie Jr. was named Executive Editor of The Washington Post on September 1, 1992, after serving as Managing Editor for seven years.

Downie joined The Post as a summer intern in 1964. He soon became a well-known local investigative reporter in Washington, specializing in crime, courts, housing and urban affairs. This reporting won him two Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild Front Page awards, the American Bar Association Gavel Award for legal reporting, and the John Hancock Award for excellent business and financial writing.

He worked on the Post's Metropolitan staff as a reporter and editor for 15 years, and ran the staff as Assistant Managing Editor for Metropolitan news from 1974 until 1979. As Deputy Metropolitan Editor, Downie supervised The Post's Watergate coverage. He was named London Correspondent in 1979 and returned to Washington in 1982 as National Editor. In 1984, he became Managing Editor. Downie is a director of The Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service and a director of the International Herald Tribune.

Born May 1, 1942, Downie grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and received his BA and MA degrees in journalism and political science from The Ohio State University. He received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Ohio State in June 1993.

In 1971-72 he spent a year on leave from The Post on an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, studying urban problems in the United States and Europe.

Downie is the author of four books: Justice Denied (1971); Mortgage on America (1974); The New Muckrakers (1976), a study of investigative reporting; and his latest book (co-authored by Associate Editor, Robert G. Kaiser), The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril. That book, which examines the news business, was published in February of 2002. Downie was also a major contributor to Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968, a Washington Post Book.

He lives in Washington with his wife, Janice. He has two teenage children, Joshua and Sarah, and two grown sons, David and Scott.

The Ohio State University Faculty Club
181 South Oval Drive
Columbus, Ohio 43210 March 20, 2002
4:00 p.m.

Reception & Book Signing to Follow
Information: (614) 292-4545