Newton, Jim 1963-

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Newton, Jim 1963-

PERSONAL:

Born 1963, in Palo Alto, CA; married Karlene Goller (a lawyer); children: Jack. Education: Dartmouth College, graduated, 1985.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Pasadena, CA. Office—Los Angeles, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

During early career, worked as a columnist's clerk for the New York Times and city desk reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA, reporter, bureau chief, and editor, 1989-2007, editorial page editor, 2007—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Pulitzer Prize (with Los Angeles Times staff), 1993, for coverage of the Los Angeles riots, and 1995, for coverage of the Northridge earthquake; IGS John Jacobs fellow, University of California at Berkeley, 2003-04.

WRITINGS:

Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made (biography), Riverhead Books (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

As a journalist with the Los Angeles Times, California native Jim Newton has reported on the state's most newsworthy events since 1989. He brought with him several years of experience with the New York Times, where he clerked for senior columnist James Reston, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered city politics. As a Los Angeles Times staff reporter, Newton was a key contributor to coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the federal prosecution of Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Rodney King, the riots that succeeded the officers' acquittal in state court, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Newton's first book, a biography of former California governor and Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, was published in 2006. Described by a Publishers Weekly reviewer as the "definitive biography" of the historical figure, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made covers all aspects of Warren's career, from his start as a county prosecutor, to his governorship, his appointment as chief justice, his landmark decisions such as the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and his role as chair of the commission investigating the murder of President John F. Kennedy. "Newton's masterful narrative synthesizes Warren in all his contradictory guises," continued the Publishers Weekly reviewer. Steven Puro commented in a review for Library Journal that the "clear and concise writing results in a thorough and thoughtful view of Warren." Los Angeles Magazine contributor Tom Carson remarked: "Newton makes an expert guide…. His reconstructions of the dickerings, compromises, and psychological gamesmanship that went into forging each ruling under Warren's guidance are fascinating, exceptionally lucid in laying out the legal issues and political context of every major case, and organized with compelling narrative momentum."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, September 15, 2006, Steven Puro, review of Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, p. 74.

Los Angeles Magazine, January, 2007, Tom Carson, "The Chief: In His Biography of Earl Warren, Jim Newton Renders a Politician and a Justice Who Read the Constitution as a User's Manual," p. 60.

Publishers Weekly, September 11, 2006, review of Justice for All, p. 47.