Wheaton North: AP Language

Wheaton North: AP Language

The New York Times Columnists: Getting to Know the Speakers

Charles M. Blow: Charles M. Blow is The New York Times's visual Op-Ed columnist. His column appears on Saturday.

Mr. Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper's graphics director, a position he held for nine years. In that role, he led The Times to a best of show award from the Society of News Design for the Times's information graphics coverage of 9/11, the first time the award had been given for graphics coverage. He also led the paper to its first two best in show awards from the Malofiej International Infographics Summit for work that included coverage of the Iraq war. Mr. Blow went on to become the paper's Design Director for News before leaving in 2006 to become the Art Director of National Geographic Magazine. Before coming to The Times, Mr. Blow had been a graphic artist at The Detroit News.

Mr. Blow graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana, where he received a B.A. in mass communications. He lives in Brooklyn with his three children.

David Brooks: David Brooks became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. He has been a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly, and he is currently a commentator on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." He is the author of "Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There" and “On Paradise Drive : How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense,” both published by Simon & Schuster. His most recent book is “The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement,” published by Random House in March 2011.

Mr. Brooks joined The Weekly Standard at its inception in September 1995, having worked at The Wall Street Journal for the previous nine years. His last post at the Journal was as op-ed editor. Prior to that, he was posted in Brussels, covering Russia, the Middle East, South Africa and European affairs. His first post at the Journal was as editor of the book review section, and he filled in for five months as the Journal's movie critic.

Mr. Brooks graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983, and worked as a police reporter for the City News Bureau, a wire service owned jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.

He is also a frequent analyst on NPR’s "All Things Considered" and the "Diane Rehm Show." His articles have appeared in the The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, the Washington Post, the TLS, Commentary, The Public Interest and many other magazines. He is editor of the anthology "Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing" (Vintage Books).

Frank Bruni: Frank Bruni, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times since June 2011, joined the newspaper in 1995. Over his years at The Times he has worn a wide variety of hats, including chief restaurant critic (from June 2004 through August 2009) and Rome bureau chief (2002 to 2004).

He has also written two New York Times best sellers: a memoir, "Born Round," that was published by Penguin Press in 2009, and "Ambling Into History," a chronicle of George W. Bush's campaign for the presidency, published by HarperCollins in 2002. That same year HarperPerennial reissued, in paperback, "A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church," of which he was a co-author. (It was initially published by Viking in 1993.)

Roger Cohen: Roger Cohen joined The New York Times in 1990. He was a foreign correspondent for more than a decade before becoming acting foreign editor on Sept. 11, 2001, and foreign editor six months later.

Since 2004, he has written a column for The Times-owned International Herald Tribune, first for the news pages and then, since 2007, for the Op-Ed page. In 2009 he was named a columnist of The New York Times.

Mr. Cohen has written “Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo” (Random House, 1998), an account of the wars of Yugoslavia’s destruction, and “Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis’ Final Gamble” (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). He has also co-written a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, “In the Eye of the Storm” (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1991).

Gail Collins: Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times’s editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish her book: “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.” She returned to The Times as a columnist in July 2007.

Before joining The Times, Ms. Collins was a columnist at New York Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International. Her first jobs in journalism were in Connecticut, where she founded the Connecticut State News Bureau, which provided coverage of the state capitol and Connecticut politics. When she sold it in 1977, the CSNB was the largest news service of its kind in the country, with more than 30 weekly and daily newspaper chains.

Ms. Collins’ most recent book is “As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda,” published in 2012 by W.W. Norton. She is also the author of “America’s Women,” “Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity and American Politics,” a biography of William Henry Harrison and “The Millennium Book,” which she co-authored with her husband, Dan Collins.

Ross Douthat: Ross Douthat joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in April 2009. Previously, he was a senior editor at the Atlantic and a blogger for theatlantic.com. His most recent book is “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics” (Free Press, 2012). He is also the author of “Privilege: Harvard and the Education of the Ruling Class” (Hyperion, 2005) and the co-author, with Reihan Salam, of “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream” (Doubleday, 2008). He is the film critic for National Review. A native of New Haven, Conn., he now lives in Washington, D.C.

Maureen Dowd: Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a New York Times Op-Ed columnist in 1995 after having served as a correspondent in the paper's Washington bureau since 1986. She has covered four presidential campaigns and served as White House correspondent. She also wrote a column, "On Washington," for The New York Times Magazine.

Ms. Dowd joined The New York Times as a metropolitan reporter in 1983. She began her career in 1974 as an editorial assistant for The Washington Star, where she later became a sports columnist, metropolitan reporter and feature writer. When the Star closed in 1981, she went to Time magazine.

Born in Washington D.C., Ms. Dowd received a B.A. degree in English literature from Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) in 1973.

Thomas L. Friedman: Thomas L. Friedman won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times. He became the paper’s foreign-affairs Op-Ed columnist in 1995. Previously, he served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau and before that he was the chief White House correspondent. In 2005, Mr. Friedman was elected as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 Mr. Friedman was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel).

Mr. Friedman is the author of “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won both the National Book Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in 1989. “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” was the winner of the 2000 Overseas Press Club Award for best non-fiction book on foreign policy. His 2002 book “Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11” consists of columns he published about the attacks. “The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century,” issued in April 2005 and updated in 2006 and 2007, received the inaugural Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.

“Hot, Flat, and Crowded” was published in 2008, and a paperback edition was issued a year later. His sixth and most recent book, “That Used to Be Us: How American Fell Behind in the World We Invented and How We Can Come Back,” co-written with Michael Mandelbaum, was released in September 2011.

Born in Minneapolis on July 20, 1953, Mr. Friedman received a B.A. degree in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University in 1975. In 1978 he received a Master of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East studies from Oxford. Mr. Friedman is married and has two daughters.

Bill Keller: Bill Keller is an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and writes for The New York Times Magazine.His column appears on Mondays.

From July 2003 until September 2011, he was the executive editor of The Times, presiding over the newsroom during a time of journalistic distinction, economic challenge, and transformation. During his eight years in that role, The Times sustained and built its formidable newsgathering staff, winning 18 Pulitzer Prizes, and expanded its audience by mastering the journalistic potential of the Internet. The newsroom also participated in the creation of a digital subscription plan to help secure the company’s economic future.

Mr. Keller was succeeded by Jill Abramson, a former investigative reporter and Washington bureau chief who had been one of his two top deputies since 2003.

Before becoming executive editor, Mr. Keller had spent two years as a senior writer for The New York Times Magazine and an Op-Ed columnist. He served as managing editor from 1997 to September 2001 after having been the newspaper’s foreign editor from June 1995 to 1997.

As chief of The Times bureau in Johannesburg from April 1992 until May 1995, he covered the end of white rule in South Africa.

From December 1986 to October 1991, Mr. Keller was a Times correspondent in Moscow, reporting on the easing and ultimate collapse of Communist rule and the breakup of the Soviet Union. In 1989, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage.

Mr. Keller joined The New York Times in 1984 as a domestic correspondent based in the Washington bureau, reporting variously on labor, agriculture and military affairs.

Before coming to The Times, Mr. Keller was a reporter for The Dallas Times Herald, the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report in Washington and The Portland Oregonian.

Mr. Keller graduated from Pomona College with a B.A. degree in 1970 and is a member of the college’s board of trustees.

He is the author of “The Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela,” published in January, 2008, by Kingfisher.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week. Mr. Kristof won the Pulitzer Prize two times, in 1990 and 2006. In 2012, he was a Pulitzer finalist in Commentary for his 2011 columns that often focused on the disenfranchised in many parts of the world.

Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei.

While working in France after high school, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia during his student years, writing articles to cover his expenses.

Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. He jokes that he’s one of the very few Americans to be at least a two-time visitor to every member of the so-called Axis of Evil. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.

After joining The Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book “The Presidents.” He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times, responsible for Sunday editions.

Paul Krugman: Paul Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the Op-Ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Mr. Krugman received his B.A. from Yale University in 1974 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 1977. He has taught at Yale, MIT and Stanford. At MIT he became the Ford International Professor of Economics.

Mr. Krugman is the author or editor of 20 books and more than 200 papers in professional journals and edited volumes. His professional reputation rests largely on work in international trade and finance; he is one of the founders of the "new trade theory," a major rethinking of the theory of international trade. In recognition of that work, in 1991 the American Economic Association awarded him its John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to "that economist under forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge." Mr. Krugman's current academic research is focused on economic and currency crises.

At the same time, Mr. Krugman has written extensively for a broader public audience. Some of his recent articles on economic issues, originally published in Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Scientific American and other journals, are reprinted in Pop Internationalism and The Accidental Theorist.