Jules Witcover

Witcover is a veteran newspaperman of 50 years' standing, having written for The Baltimore Sun, the now-defunct Washington Star, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post.{{cite web|url=http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/JulesWitcovereBooks.htm |title=Fictionwise eBooks: Jules Witcover |accessdate=May 29, 2007 |url-status=usurped |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927203257/http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/JulesWitcovereBooks.htm |archivedate=September 27, 2007 }} Together with Jack Germond, Witcover co-wrote "Politics Today," a five-day-a-week syndicated column, for over 24 years.{{Cite news|last=Martin|first=Douglas|date=August 14, 2013|title=Jack Germond, Political Reporter of the Old School, Dies at 85|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/us/jack-germond-political-reporter-of-the-old-school-dies-at-85.html|access-date=June 22, 2020|issn=0362-4331}}

Witcover was born in Union City, New Jersey.{{cite news|last=Homer|first=Shirley|title=ABOUT BOOKS|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/29/nyregion/about-books.html|accessdate=November 5, 2013|newspaper=New York Times|date=October 29, 1989}} Witcover began working in Washington for Newhouse Newspapers in 1954. He was reportedly steps away from where Robert F. Kennedy was shot in 1968. He was also one of the reporters featured in the 1972 book on campaign journalism, The Boys on the Bus, and eventually came to be seen as a "journalistic institution," according to media critic Howard Kurtz.{{cite news|last1=Kurtz|first1=Howard |title=As Columnist Departs, Little Warmth From the Sun

|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082201411_pf.html |newspaper=Washington Post|date=August 23, 2005 }}

For 45 years, Witcover wrote a syndicated political column, from which he retired in 2022.{{cite news|url = https://www.nvdaily.com/nvdaily/jules-witcover-on-ending-a-lifetime-of-writing-about-american-politics/article_3e067581-fc88-5316-94ff-2d9de1a40731.html|last = Witcover|first = Jules|title = Jules Witcover: On ending a lifetime of writing about American politics|date = December 13, 2022|accessdate = July 23, 2024|newspaper = The Northern Virginia Daily|publisher = Tribune Content Agency}}{{cite web |title=Politics Today articles by Jules Witcover |url=https://tribunecontentagency.com/premium-content/opinion/liberal/politics-today/ |website=Tribune Content Agency |accessdate=October 9, 2018}} His most recent book is The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Published in 2014, Kirkus Reviews described the work as a "valuable book of American history."{{cite web|url= https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jules-witcover/america-vice-presidency/|title= The American Vice Presidency Kirkus review}} Other work includes Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Nixon & Agnew, Public Affairs (2007),{{cite web|url=http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book%3D1586484702 |title=PublicAffairs Books: VERY STRANGE BEDFELLOWS |accessdate=May 29, 2007 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928035019/http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=1586484702 |archivedate=September 28, 2007 }} and Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption.{{cite book|url= https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Biden-Life-Trial-Redemption-ebook/dp/B003V1WTFY/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439026608&sr=1-1&keywords=Joe+Biden%3A+A+Life+of+Trial+and+Redemption

|title= Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption Amazon page|via= Amazon|date= October 5, 2010}} In March 2008, his history of campaign finance reform, "The Longest Campaign," appeared on the Center for Public Integrity's The Buying of the President 2008 website.{{cite web|url=http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/stories/the_longest_campaign/ |title=The Buying of the President 2008 : The Longest Campaign |accessdate=April 4, 2008 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080328111345/http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/stories/the_longest_campaign/ |archivedate=March 28, 2008 }} Joe Biden: A Life Of Trial And Redemptions 2020 update includes 4 additional chapters, picking up where the original version left off and covers Biden's successful presidential campaign.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

Witcover married author and H.L. Mencken scholar Marion Elizabeth Rodgers on June 21, 1997.{{cite web |title=3042 Q Street in Georgetown: Built in 1840 or 1940? |url=http://househistoryman.blogspot.com/2012/03/3042-q-street-in-georgetown-built-in.html |accessdate=August 28, 2019 |date=March 14, 2012}} He is a graduate of Columbia College (1949) and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (1951).{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=An Ink-Stained Wretch Captures a Pre-Presidential Richard Nixon|url=https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/sep_oct06/forum.html|access-date=June 22, 2020|website=Columbia College Today}}

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?8879-1/whose-broad-stripes-bright-stars Booknotes interview with Witcover and Germond on Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars?, August 27, 1989], C-SPAN}}

• Blue Smoke & Mirrors: How Reagan Won and Why Carter Lost the Election of 1980, Viking Press (1981)
• Wake Us When It's Over: Presidential Politics of 1984, Macmillan (1985)
• Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency 1988, Warner Books (1989)
• Mad As Hell: Revolt at the Ballot Box 1992, Warner Books (1992)

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?88943-1/the-year-dream-died Washington Journal interview with Witcover on The Year the Dream Died, August 7, 1997], C-SPAN| video2 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?154181-1/no-pick-president Presentation by Witcover on No Way to Pick a President, December 7, 1999], C-SPAN| video3 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?180019-1/party-people Presentation by Witcover on Party of the People, November 25, 2003], C-SPAN| video4 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?199069-1/very-strange-bedfellows Presentation by Witcover on Very Strange Bedfellows, June 8, 2007], C-SPAN| video5 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?297552-1/joe-biden Presentation by Witcover on Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption, December 14, 2010], C-SPAN}}

• The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power, Smithsonian Books (2014)
• Joe Biden: A Life of Trial and Redemption, William Morrow & Company (2010, paperback 2019, updated 2020)
• Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Nixon & Agnew, Public Affairs (2007)
• The Making of an Ink-Stained Wretch: Half a Century Pounding the Political Beat, Johns Hopkins Press (2005)
• Party of the People: A History of the Democrats, Random House (2003)
• No Way to Pick a President: How Money and Hired Guns Have Debased American Elections, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1999)
• The Year the Dream Died: Revisiting 1968 in America, Warner Books (1997)
• Crapshoot: Rolling the Dice on the Vice Presidency, Crown Publishers (1992)
• The Main Chance: A Novel, Viking Press (1979)
• Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976, Viking Press (1977)
• White Knight: The Rise of Spiro Agnew, Random House (1972)
• The Resurrection of Richard Nixon, Putnam (1970)
• 85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy, Putnam (1969) (A 20th-anniversary edition was printed by Quill in 1988 with a new introduction by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and epilogue by the author)

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Category:1927 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American journalists

Category:21st-century American male writers

Category:American columnists

Category:American male journalists

Category:American political writers

Category:Columbia College (New York) alumni

Category:Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni

Category:The Baltimore Sun people

Category:The Washington Post people