Peter Baker (journalist)

Peter Baker
Baker at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2017
Born	Peter Eleftherios Baker (1967-07-02) July 2, 1967 Falls Church, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist
Alma mater	Oberlin College
Genre	Non-fiction
Subject	Politics
Notable works	The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House
Spouse	Susan B. Glasser (m. 2000)
Children	1

Peter Eleftherios Baker (born July 2, 1967) is an American journalist and author who is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.^[1] He was responsible for covering President Barack Obama and the Obama administration. After being assigned as Jerusalem bureau chief for the Times he was, in December 2016, reassigned to the White House beat for the incoming Trump administration.^[2]

Early life and education

Baker was born in 1967, the son of Linda Henderson Gross (later Sinrod) and E. P. Baker.^[3][4] His father was a lawyer and his mother a computer programmer.^[3] He is a 1988 graduate of Oberlin College.^[5]

Career

Prior to joining The New York Times in 2008, Baker was a reporter for 20 years at The Washington Post, where he also covered the White House during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.^[6] During his first tour at the White House, Baker co-authored the paper's first story about the Lewinsky scandal and served as the paper's lead writer during the subsequent impeachment battle. He subsequently published his first book, The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton through Simon & Schuster, based on his coverage of the impeachment proceedings in Congress. During his next White House assignment, he covered the travails of Bush's second term, from the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina to Supreme Court nomination fights and the economy.

In between stints at the White House, Baker and his wife, Susan Glasser, spent four years as Moscow bureau chiefs, chronicling the rise of Vladimir Putin, the rollback of Russian democracy, the Second Chechen War and the terrorist attacks on a theater in Moscow and the Beslan school hostage crisis. Baker also covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.^[7] He was the first American newspaper journalist to report from rebel-held northern Afghanistan after Sept. 11, 2001, and he spent the next eight months covering the overthrow of the Taliban and the emergence of a new government. He later spent six months in the Middle East, reporting from inside Saddam Hussein's Iraq and around the region before embedding with the U.S. Marines as they drove toward Baghdad.^[8]

In May 2005, Baker published his second book, Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution through Scribners, with Susan Glasser, a detailed accounting of Vladimir Putin's consolidation of power during his first term as President of Russia. It was later named one of the Best Books of 2005 by The Washington Post Book World. While serving as White House correspondent for The Washington Post, he won the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2007 for his "exceptionally trenchant appraisal" of the achievements and shortfalls of the second year of President George W. Bush's second term in office.^[9] After joining The New York Times, he received the 2011 Aldo Beckman Memorial Award for his "remarkable run" of detailed coverage of the second year of President Obama's first term.^[10] While still writing for The New York Times, Baker again won the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency in 2015 for being "reliably consistent in providing analysis, historical context and behind-the-scenes reporting" of the administration's handling of foreign affairs in the first year of President Obama's second term.^[11]

Baker is a regular panelist on PBS's Washington Week and a frequent guest on other television and radio programs.^[12] A native of the Washington, D.C. area, Baker attended Oberlin College, where he worked as a reporter for the student newspaper, The Oberlin Review. After graduating, he worked for The Washington Times for two years before joining The Washington Post in 1988 as a reporter covering Virginia news.

In October 2013, Baker published his third book, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House through Doubleday, a detailed narrative account of the two-term presidency of George W. Bush.^[13] Shortly thereafter, it was listed as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013 by The New York Times.^[14] In June 2017, he published his fourth book, Obama: The Call of History through New York Times/Callaway, an assessment of President Obama's two terms in office in the broader context of history. In November 2017, it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography.^[15]

Works

• The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton. Simon & Schuster. 2000. ISBN 978-0-7432-1293-9.
• Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution. Simon & Schuster. 2005. ISBN 978-0-7432-8179-9.
• Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. Knopf Doubleday. 2013. ISBN 978-0-385-53692-9.
• Obama: The Call of History. Harry N. Abrams. 2017. ISBN 978-0-935-11290-0. ^[16]

Personal life

In 2000, he married Susan Glasser in a civil ceremony.^[3] His wife has been an editor at The Washington Post, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, and is currently the chief international affairs columnist at Politico.^[17][18][19] The couple lives in Washington, D.C. with their son, Theodore.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Peter Baker (journalist).

• Appearances on C-SPAN