Home of the World's Most Influential Journalists

NewsBios tracks the comings and goings of influential journalists and compiles professionally reported biographical profiles on them. 

Our service is used primarily by PR people and senior corporate executives who feel more confident knowing the backgrounds of journalists who approach them for interviews or who they approach with news and feature ideas. NewsBios also reaches many journalists, including leading editors, who use the service in recruiting staff and for competitive analysis.

Because NewsBios has reported on the most important journalists for more than 22 years, we are viewed in many newsrooms as a kind of a Who's Who of Influential Journalists with more than 7,000 profiles on file representing every major American news outlet and many global news leaders. 

NewsBios include information on the public record and/or provided to our reporters directly by the journalists themselves. 

Our executive editor is Dean Rotbart, who got his start as a reporter and columnist at The Wall Street Journal.  Dean has been a media reporter for more than 20 years.  He oversees all reporting and is integral in making the selection of which journalists to include on our website.

Our selection criteria revolve around journalists -- both reporters and editors -- who we deem are helping to set the news agenda nationally and winning the respect and acknowledgement of peers, colleagues and story subjects alike.  We accept nominations for the inclusion of journalists from both the media and public relations profession.

==================================

Competition #3: Quality Writing and Thinking Run in the Family
Mom is a professor of Media History at the Univerheresity of Westminster and is currently working on an official history of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Contest #2: Not to Drop Names, But I Do Know Uma Thurman
Although I write for The Wall Street Journal, I have never traded a single share of stock.  For extra cash, I prefer dog sitting.

Contest #1: Uncle Albert Was A Civil War Hero
My mom is the niece of Colonel Albert Augustus Pope, for whom Pope Park in Hartford, Connecticut is named.  Uncle Albert was a bicycle magnet and Civil War hero.
___________________________

Download the Full NewsBios of Robert Thomson, Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal here now! Free. Last updated 9/22/08.
__________________________
October 13th E-Briefing
September 26th E-Briefing

Enter Your Email Below

Blogging NewsBios

January 21, 2010

WSJ Names Stefanie Ilgenfritz to Oversee Its Pharma and Health Beats

Stefanie Ilgenfritz, 43, has been named Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal’s New York-based health group. She succeeds John Carreyrou, who had oversight of the paper’s health and science coverage since 2008.

Ms. Ilfenfritz’s appointed comes as something of a surprise, both because she has had only limited hard news reporting and editing experience and because she leapfrogs over other qualified candidates, such as Ron Winslow, a veteran health and science reporter and editor.  Mr. Winslow is currently the health and science group's deputy editor.

Ms. Ilgenfritz, who joined the paper more than 19 years ago, has been working for the Personal Journal section since 2002, most recently carrying the title of deputy editor. The section emphasizes consumer lifestyle topics rather than hard business and financial news.

Ms. Ilgenfritz did serve as an editor on two Pulitzer Prize-winning packages of health stories and also previously worked as the health editor of Personal Journal.

Among those she’ll now oversee, in addition to Mr. Winslow, are Jacob Goldstein, Jonathan D. Rockoff and Shirley S. Wang.

Ms. Ilgenfritz, who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, is married to Scott Harrison Griff, 44, who like her attended the University of Michigan. Her father, James, passed away in February 2009.

In a memo announcing her appointment, Robert Thomson, managing editor, made no mention of the fate of Mr. Carreyrou, who first joined Dow Jones in 1997.

Ms. Ilgenfritz will report to Matt Murray, deputy managing editor.

[To download Ms. Ilgenfritz's full NewsBio immediately, 24/7, click here.]

January 20, 2010

Ali Velshi: The 'Hairless Profit of Doom'

The past year has been very eventful period for Ali Velshi, 40, who recently remarried, published his first book and beginning this week is relocating from New York to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters to anchor the 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (EST) edition of CNN Newsroom, the network’s early afternoon general newscast.

Mr. Velshi, already one of CNN’s most visible correspondents because of his extensive coverage in 2008 and 2009 of the mortgage and financial crises and the government’s stimulus efforts, was front-and-center as the prime anchor of CNN’s highly viewed coverage of the attempted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day.

In announcing Mr. Velshi’s promotion to regular weekday anchor, Jon Klein, President of CNN U.S., remarked: “Ali has enormous range as a broadcaster…. He’s passionate and smart, and brings a level of experience that viewers expect from CNN.”

In Mr. Velshi’s case, he has also demonstrated that he is a workhorse, serving simultaneously as chief business correspondent, a radio and weekend television host, a frequent guest on other programs, an Internet social-networker and a podcaster. Mr. Velshi has said that he seldom works fewer than 12 hours a day and during the height of the financial crisis was regularly logging 20-hour-a-day marathons.

Mr. Velshi is a veteran financial journalist at CNN. He first joined CNN in September 2001 as part of CNNfn, the network’s now-defunct business and financial channel. Born in Nairobi to Indian parents, Mr. Velshi and his family moved to Toronto when he was a year old. He was schooled in Canada and cut his broadcast journalism teeth there.

Self-described as “an intense, caffeinated guy,” Mr. Velshi achieved pop culture recognition for his often dour economic forecasts when Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, dubbed him “the hairless profit of doom” – a moniker that stuck.

[To download Mr. Velshi's full NewsBio immediately, 24/7, click here.]

January 12, 2010

Health Beat Can Be Quite Personal: Two
NYT's Reporters Lose A Mother As Teens

Our newly updated NewsBios profile of Donald G. McNeil Jr., who covers infectious diseases for The New York Times, reveals a journalist with an unusually rich personal and professional background.

Since 1988, McNeil has penned well over 1,200 bylined articles for the Times. Among these are some well-crafted first-person stories that have included close-up narrations of his bungee-jumping off Victoria Falls; getting a finger tattoo in place of a wedding ring; whale watching; cataract surgery; attending a sleep clinic; serving in voluntary SARS quarantine; and his undying affection for the ABC television program, Supernanny and HBO’s Sex and the City.

But to me, the most memorable article he has written ran June 16, 2005, when he revealed some personal emotional insights, which journalists often do – if you know where to look.

McNeil, who turns 56 next month, talks about his mother, who starting at age 33 bore five children in eight years.

“She was actually a great 1950’s mom, with huge reserves of patience, cool Halloween costumes and memorable Christmases, but when our spats woke her at 5 a.m., she could lay about us with a pink slipper with a sole like a blackjack.

“When I was older, she broke my grandfather’s hand-carved Yale frat initiation paddle on me, and was so upset at having snapped the heirloom that she stabbed me with the handle.

“And yet I loved her.”

McNeil’s mother died when he was still a teen.

The tale struck me not only as sad but called to mind the premature death of Sheila Hawkins Harris, mother of another New York Times health reporter, Washington-based Gardiner Harris. She died of cancer at age 50, when Gardiner was only 14 years old.

I’m not sure that Don and Gardiner even know that they – two Times health reporters – share such a painful adolescent loss. And I have no idea how each of their careers were or were not shaped by the loss of a parent at such tender ages.

What I do know, from having written or edited hundreds of NewsBios of influential health reporters, is that many of these journalists have had to cope with the premature loss of an immediate family member or have had to battle with serious health circumstances themselves.

The health beat is, for many, quite personal.

[To download Mr. Neil's full NewsBio immediately, 24/7, click here.]

Other Recent Blogging NewsBios Posts Include:

John Acher - Reuters 
Cristina Alesci - Bloomberg
Rob Cox - Breakingviews
Automotive Writers                       
Julia Boorstin - CNBC
Jessica Hall - Reuters
Bob Herbert - NYT
Rob Schmitz - KQED

Greg Farrell, Financial Times

@NewsBios
BIRTHDAY TWEETS

Wednesday, January 13, 2010:

Tuesday, January 12, 2010:

More Birthday Tweets Here

Download Bios Now from NewsBios-on-Demand.com

Now a growing number of our in-depth journalist profiles are available to download instantly, 24/7.  Check here often to see recently added NewsBios.

WSJ's Dennis K. Berman

SEE the Full On-Demand List

        A Division of the TJFR Group, Inc.

        2020 Arapahoe Street/Lower Level

        Denver, CO 80205

        P:  1.866.NEWS.070 ext. 2  F:  720.528.7821

        E:  TJFR@NewsBios.com