User:Bloomsusa/Lee Kravitz

Lee Kravitz is the author of Unfinished Business and most recently the editor-in-chief of Parade magazine.

In his 20-year career as an editor and media executive, Lee Kravitz has launched, led and run some of the nation’s most widely read publications. He has also initiated dozens of high-profile, public-awareness campaigns with corporate and not-for-profit partners. His mission has been “to tell stories that connect emotionally to everyday Americans, moving them to actions that improve their lives, the nation and the world.”

Parade Magazine
From 2000 through 2007, Kravitz was editor-in-chief and senior vice president of Parade, the Sunday magazine distributed by more than 400 newspapers. With more than 70 million readers, Parade was and remains the world’s largest-circulation magazine. At Parade, Kravitz reinvigorated key franchises such as “What People Earn,” ”What America Eats” and the Parade High School All-American teams. He developed the popular PARADE Snapshot and Parade Picks columns and expanded the magazine’s coverage of food, personal finance and health. Kravitz commissioned articles by such noted writers and journalists as Mitch Albom, Richard Ben Cramer, Michael Crichton, Bruce Feiler, David Halberstam, Peter Maas, Norman Mailer, Jack Newfield, Oliver Sacks, Dick Schapp, Gail Sheehy, Jim Webb and Elie Wiesel. Among the national and world leaders he edited were Aung Sun Sui Kyi, Colin Powell, Bill Bradley, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Notable cover stories during his tenure included Parade’s annual ranking of the ten worst dictators and David Wallechinsky’s “Visit to the Bridge to Nowhere,” which provoked so much outrage among Parade’s readers that Congress was forced to rescind a $235 million earmark to build two bridges in a remote part of Alaska. Kravitz also initiated cause-related campaigns with such organizations as the American Heart Association, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, HGTV, the Food Network, Research!America, The White House Project, Share Our Strength, ABC Entertainment, General Mills and The Nature Conservancy. In the year prior to his leaving Parade, the magazine sold the most ad pages in its history and beat back well-funded challenges by Gannett’s USA Weekend and Time-Warner’s repositioning of LIFE as a weekly newspaper supplement.

React
Kravitz came to Parade in 1995 to launch React, the pioneering, newspaper-distributed magazine for teenagers that reached a weekly circulation of 3 million through 245 newspapers before its close in June 2000. React’s web site, react.com, was among the most popular teen sites on the Internet, with as many as 7.5 million page impressions per month. The React Take Action Awards, a program Kravitz developed with the non-profit New World Foundation, gave away $1 million in college scholarships and philanthropic donations each year to the nation’s top young activists. Kravitz also developed editorial programs through partnerships with Sony Music, the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the National Science Foundation. React’s mission was to give voice to young people and to help the newspaper industry build a future generation of readers. It was the first magazine to develop an interactive community for teens in both print and cyberspace and the first to attract an equal audience of boys and girls.

Scholastic, Inc.
From 1987 to 1995, Kravitz was an editorial director of Scholastic Inc., the educational publishing company. He oversaw several classroom magazines, including Choices, Science World, Search, Update, and Junior Scholastic, with a total readership of 8 million young people, and served as director of new media and special projects for the company’s 37 magazines. Among the new products and programs he developed were the Scholastic/NBC News Videos with Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric, “SuperScience with Molly and Bert,” an animated distance-learning series on Georgia Public Television, Scholastic NewsFax and the National Student Town Meeting Series on C-Span. He also developed high-profile partnerships with music and entertainment companies that brought pop culture into classrooms. The most notable was “Write Lyrics!” with Elektra Records. This annual contest and writing program featured Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Tracy Chapman and other major artists. Kravitz directed Scholastic’s award-winning coverage of the AIDS epidemic, the Gulf War and the fall of communism. He also led literacy, civic-awareness and human-rights campaigns that involved millions of young people in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Education and Awards
An honors graduate of Yale University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Kravitz grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he attended University School. He began his career as a freelance writer and photojournalist, traveling to more than 40 countries. He has reported from Russia, South Korea, Kenya, Thailand, Indonesia, Israel and Cuba and from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and India where he traveled overland by Land Rover for more than a year. Early in his career Kravitz published major interviews with Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson and other master photographers. He and the magazines under his direction have received more than 200 journalism awards. They include three Silver Gavel Awards from the American Bar Association for outstanding contribution to the public’s understanding of the nation’s legal system ; three Harry Chapin Media Awards for best magazine coverage of world hunger; Magazine Week’s Humanitarian Award; the Olive Branch Award for outstanding magazine coverage of international security from NYU’s Center for War, Peace and the news media; numerous Clarion, EDPRESS, Parents Choice and Folio Awards; and the prestigious President’s Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for his contributions to that industry.

Not-For-Profit Boards
Kravitz has been president of Youth Communication Inc., a publisher of writing by and for inner-city youth and teens in foster care, since 1999. He is a founding board member of The League: Powered by Learning to Give, which is developing a new school- and web-based model for community service. He currently serves on the boards of the Public Education Network, Youth Service America, and National History Day and he is a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Health Literacy. He has been actively involved on committees of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Overseas Press Club, the Freedom Forum, the Alumni Association of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He is a past member of the National Council for Social Studies and the National Council on History Education.

Personal Life
Kravitz lives in Manhattan and Clinton Corners, New York, with his wife, the literary agent Elizabeth Kaplan, and their three children: Benjamin and Caroline, 11, and Noah, 8. Their family also includes two cats and a dog named Pip. He is currently at work on his first book, Unfinished Business: One Man's Midlife Journey to Set Things Straight and Take His Soul's Measure (Bloomsbury USA), scheduled for publication in June 2010.