 |
Host, Media Matters
Alex S. Jones works as a journalist, author, broadcaster, and academic and has made
a specialty of covering the media itself.
On July 1, 2001, Mr. Jones became director of the Joan Shorestein Center on the Press,
Politics, and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School for Government at Harvard
University, a media-oriented think tank whose mission is to probe and illuminate how
the media influences politics and public policy.
In 1987 Mr. Jones was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his articles in THE NEW YORK
TIMES on the collapse of the Bingham families' newspaper empire in Louisville,
Kentucky. From 1983 until 1992, he covered the press for THE TIMES, writing on a wide
range of media issues from the ethical dilemmas to financial matters.
In September, 1999, a book by Mr. Jones and Susan E. Tifft, his wife, was published
entitled THE TRUST: THE PRIVATE AND POWERFUL FAMILY BEHIND THE NEW YORK
TIMES, which NEWSWEEK called a "fascinating family portrait" told "without fear or
favor." Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft won the 1999 Ann M. Sperber Biography Award, which is
conferred by Fordham University in New York City for exceptional achievement in writing
and research. THE TRUST was also one of five books nominated for the National Book
Critics Circle award in biography. TIME MAGAZINE chose The Trust as one of the "five
best non-fiction books of 1999; THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, and BUSINESS WEEK also selected it as one of the
year's finest books.
In 1992, Mr. Jones resigned from THE NEW YORK TIMES to work with Ms. Tifft on this
biography of the Ochs and Sulzberger families, which has owned THE TIMES for over a
century. The multi-generational dynastic biography is a completely independent book,
but had the cooperation of the family. Little, Brown &smp; Company, a division of
Time Warner, is the publisher. THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE published two long
articles by Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft based on material from their book.
From January 1998 until June 2000, Mr. Jones was Eugene C. Patterson Professor of
the Practice of Journalism at Duke University. The Patterson chair, which is part of the
Stanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke, in endowed by The St. Petersburg Times,
where Mr. Patterson was a distinguished editor.
From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Jones was host of National Public Radio's ON THE MEDIA, a live
two-hour weekly program produced at WNYC, New York's public radio station. He
continues to do commentaries for the program as a senior correspondent.
In 1991, Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft, then associate editor at TIME MAGAZINE, were
co-authors of THE PATRIARCH: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE BINGHAM DYNASTY, a book
published by Summit, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. Among other honors, THE
PATRIARCH was selected one of "The Best Ten Business Books" of the year by
BUSINESS WEEK and was named by THE NEW YORK TIMES as one of 1991's "Notable
Books."
Mr. Jones served as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize competition in 1997 and 1999. In
1996-7, Mr. Jones was a Senior Fellow at New York's Media Studies Center, which is
funded by the Freedom Forum. In October 1994, Mr. Jones and Ms. Tifft were residents
at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Study and Conference Center on Lake Como,
in Italy. He has been a visiting journalism lecturer-in-residence at Washington and Lee
University in Lexington, Virginia and Woodrow Wilson Foundation Visiting Fellow at
Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, West Virginia.
Mr. Jones is frequently interviewed as an authority on media issues and has appeared
on such programs as THE NEW HOUR, THE CHARLIE ROSE SHOW, BRILL'S CONTENT,
FREEDOM FORUM MEDIA STUDIES JOURNAL, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, NIEMAN
REPORTS, AMERICAN JOURNALISM REVIEW, CNBC, BBC, CNN, CBC, C-Span, News Talk
Television, WBAI-FM (New York), and other foreign and domestic publications and broadcast stations, 1983 to present.
Mr. Jones is a member of the fourth generation of a Tennessee newspaper family, and
he remains active in the ownership and management of the family's group of small
dailies, non-dailies, and radio stations. The first two generations of the family's
journalistic tradition were represented by his great-grandmother and grandmother,
both members of the Tennessee Newspaper Hall of Fame at the University of
Tennessee.
In 1981-82, Mr. Jones was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He is a graduate of
Washington & Lee University. From 1968-71, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy.
Mr. Jones is on the advisory board of The Columbia Journalism Review, International
Center of Journalists, Committee of Concerned Journalists, and the Bertelsmann
Foundation's New York Media Project. He is also on the board of the International
Center for Journalists.
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Alex S. Jones, Host, Media Matters
|
 |
|
