Draft:Jim Newton (journalist)

Jim Newton is a journalist, author and lecturer of Communication and Public Policy at UCLA. He is most known for his 25-year tenure at the Los Angeles Times, covering politics and government, including the LAPD, and leading the paper’s editorial pages from 2007 through 2010. He is a frequent guest lecturer and public speaker, and a regular commentator in print, radio, television and online.

Childhood and Education
A native of California, Newton grew up in Palo Alto, Boston, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., and Guadalajara, Jalisco.

He graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1981 and attended Dartmouth College from 1981 to 1985. While at Dartmouth he was a member of Casque and Gauntlet senior honor society, and publisher of the Daily Dartmouth. His senior thesis in Government was awarded the Pressman Prize and was later published (in revised form) by “Polity, the New England Journal of Political Science.” He graduated with highest honors.

He was a John Jacobs Fellow at UC Berkeley from 2004 to 2005 and a Senior Fellow in Public Affairs at UCLA from 2009 to 2014.

The New York Times and Atlanta Constitution
Newton served as the clerk to The New York Times columnist James Reston in 1985 and 1986, part of a long line of Reston clerks that includes, among others, Linda Greenhouse, David Shipler and Steven Rattner. Reston’s clerkship, suggested to him by Justice Felix Frankfurter, brought one recent college graduate a year to the Washington Bureau of The New York Times. During his time at The New York Times, Newton also served as a news assistant assigned to the foreign desk.

He left The Times in 1987 to join Bill Kovach and Wendell Rawls at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, first covering suburban county government, then Atlanta City Hall and Mayor Andrew Young. He moved to the Los Angeles Times in 1989 and worked there until early 2015.

Los Angeles Times
Over the course of a 25-year career, Newton served as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, department head, editorial page editor, columnist and editor-at-large at the Los Angeles Times. He covered the Los Angeles Police Department, Mayor Richard Riordan, state and local politics and breaking news. He also supervised reporters and editors in various positions. He played significant roles in two reporting efforts, coverage of the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, that were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for the staff.

Newton was the lead reporter on the civil rights trial of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney G. King after a 1991 car chase and arrest that was captured on video. His coverage included a Los Angeles Times Magazine article entitled “How the Case Was Won,” an inside look at the prosecution that resulted in convictions of Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officer Laurence M. Powell. In the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots and the civil rights trial, Newton covered the long effort to reform the LAPD.

Newton was the lead reporter for The Times’ coverage of the OJ Simpson murder case, and he appears in an Academy Award-winning documentary about that period, “OJ: Made in America,” released in 2016.

As editorial page editor, he supervised The Times’ first-ever endorsement of a Democrat for president, when the paper backed Barack Obama in 2008.

Newton was named Journalist of the Year by the Los Angeles Press Club in 1994 and Time Mirror Journalist of the Year in 1996.

UCLA
At UCLA, Newton serves as editor-in-chief of Blueprint, a magazine focused on public policy issues in Los Angeles and California. He is also a senior consultant with UCLA magazine and a lecturer in Public Policy and Communication Studies.

Blueprint
In 2015, Newton helped to found and launch Blueprint magazine, a biannual publication of UCLA and the Luskin School of Public Affairs. Blueprint addresses issues in California public policy and politics, with an emphasis on cutting-edge research that sheds light on those issues. Written mainly by freelance journalists and designed by Rent Control in Orange County, it has been recognized for editorial and design excellence. Newton serves as the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Its senior editor, Richard Meyer, also is a veteran of the Los Angeles Times.

Since its founding in 2015, Blueprint has featured influential articles on climate change, criminal justice, race relations, philanthropy and the international response to COVID-19. Although non-partisan, the magazine was frequently critical of President Trump.

Its “Table Talk” and “Profile” sections have featured some of the most influential voices in American politics and culture, including Gov. Jerry Brown, Congresswoman Karen Bass, television producer Norman Lear, Congressman Adam Schiff, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Vice President Kamala Harris (whose 2015 interview, while she was serving as California’s Attorney General, was Blueprint’s debut “Table Talk”).

Publications
Newton is the author of four books of history and biography. His first book, “Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made,” (Riverhead, 2006) was a biography of the California governor and chief justice. He followed that five years later with “Eisenhower: The White House Years,” (Doubleday, 2011). In 2014, he joined former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to produce Panetta’s memoir, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” (Penguin Press, 2014). His fourth book, “Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown,” (Little, Brown, 2020) fused Brown’s story with that of modern California. Reviewing it, David Shribman wrote that “it is the play of this man of the mind against the experience of a veteran newsman that makes this volume a formidable contribution to the history of both the state and the country."

Awards
Newton was presented the Carey McWilliams Award in September 2022. Named after Carey McWilliams the award is given "to honor a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics."

Personal
Newton is married to Karlene Goller, a First Amendment lawyer and former deputy general counsel of the Los Angeles Times, and is the father of a son, Jack Newton. All three live in Southern California.