Nicholas kristof new york times biography

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.

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 140 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. He's also 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 New York 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.

In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Ove

How did you become interested in journalism?

Nicholas Kristof: In the eighth grade, there was an organizational meeting to have a school newspaper. I didn’t show up. A bunch of other kids did. I think a bunch of them wanted to actually work on a paper, but none of them really wanted to edit it. They were trying to figure out how to reconcile that, and what they decided to do was they elected me editor in my absence! Since I wasn’t there to protest, I became editor. And then I found I really liked it, and really enjoyed both, just the aesthetic of writing, and also the ego thrill of the byline. And so that was my beginnings as a journalist.

How did you start writing professionally?

Nicholas Kristof: There’s a local newspaper that came out initially twice a week, later three times a week, called the News Register in McMinnville, Oregon. And when I turned 16 and got my driver’s license, then I signed up to write for them. And the editor of it, he knew that — it’s a farming area — that he needed to cover farming, but he didn’t know anything about it. And as a result, he couldn’t actually determine I didn’t know anything about it either. So as a high school student I covered farming in the area, and again, I just found it extraordinary to run around, talk to people, find out about things that were interesting, and then get paid for it. So that was a major step along my road to being a journalist.

One of your old classmates said you were raised to be self-reliant. Do you think that’s true?

Nicholas Kristof: Yeah, I do think that is true. My parents in general had a lot of confidence that I would always — that things would work out. When I was at Oxford, I happened to be taking a vacation in Poland when martial law was declared, so all communications were severed. There I was in Poland, and a local TV station heard about this and came out to do an interview with my dad. And the story

American journalist and political commentator (born 1959)

Nicholas Donabet Kristof (born April 27, 1959) is an American journalist and political commentator. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he is a regular CNN contributor and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

Born in Chicago, Kristof was raised in Yamhill, Oregon, the son of two professors at nearby Portland State University. After graduating from Harvard University, where he wrote for The Harvard Crimson, Kristof intermittently interned at The Oregonian. He joined the staff of The New York Times in 1984.

Kristof is a self-described progressive. According to The Washington Post, Kristof "rewrote opinion journalism" with his emphasis on human rights abuses and social injustices, such as human trafficking and the Darfur conflict. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa described Kristof as an "honorary African" for shining a spotlight on neglected conflicts in the continent.

Early life and education

Kristof was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up on a family sheep farm and cherry orchard in Yamhill, Oregon. He is the son of Jane Kristof (née McWilliams) and Ladis "Kris" Kristof (born Władysław Krzysztofowicz; 1918-2010), both long-time professors at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. His father, who was born to Polish and Armenian parents in Chernivtsi, former Austria-Hungary, immigrated to the United States after World War II. Kristof graduated from Yamhill Carlton High School, where he was student body president and school newspaper editor. He attended Harvard College, where he was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. At Harvard, he studied government, interned at Portland's The Oregonian, and worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper. According to a profile of him, "Alums recall Kristof as one of the brightest undergraduates on campus."

After Harvard