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Howard Fineman is an American journalist who is editorial director of the AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Fineman is also a political analyst for NBC News, contributing reports to the network and its cable television affiliate, MSNBC. He appears frequently on Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and The Rachel Maddow Show.

Prior to his move to Huffington Post in October 2010, he was Newsweek’s Chief Political Correspondent, Senior Editor and Deputy Washington Bureau Chief. Fineman's writing has included several Newsweek cover stories, and he has also written articles and columns for The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC.com and The New Republic. His 2008 book, The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country, was a national best-seller.

Education and early life
Fineman grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended Taylor Allderdice High School, graduating in 1966. He went on to attend Colgate University, where he graduated with a B.A. in 1970. While at Colgate, he was editor-in-chief of The Colgate Maroon-News, the school's weekly newspaper.

Following his undergraduate studies, Fineman earned an M.S. in journalism from Columbia in 1973. He received a Watson Traveling fellowship at Colgate and a Pulitzer traveling fellowship while at Columbia, for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He attended the University of Louisville School of Law while working for The Courier-Journal, graduating with a J.D.

The Courier-Journal
Fineman's professional journalism career began at The Courier-Journal, the main newspaper for the city of Louisville, Kentucky. He worked at the Louisville headquarters for several years covering state politics, the environment and the coal industry, and moved to join the newspaper's Washington, D.C. bureau in 1978.

Newsweek
Fineman began writing for Newsweek in 1980, as a political correspondent for the magazine. He became Newsweek's chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993 and served as senior editor from 1995 through 2010.

Fineman's coverage of politics for Newsweek was broad, as he authored more than 1,600 articles for Newsweek's weekly print publication and Newsweek.com over the course of 30 years. Fineman became most well known for his coverage of U.S. Presidential campaigns during this time, having interviewed and reported on every major presidential candidate who ran for office between 1985 and 2008, including George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Fineman's March 9, 2003 Newsweek cover story about George W. Bush, titled “Bush and God,” was one of a series of articles for which Newsweek won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2003.

MSNBC.com
Fineman began writing and reporting on politics for MSNBC in the 1990s. He became a columnist for MSNBC.com when the website launched in 1998, marking one of the earlier examples of a paid journalist writing a regular column on a news website. Fineman began writing the "Living Politics" for MSNBC.com, and it later appeared as a regular column on Newsweek.com and in the print editions of Newsweek magazine. While he still appears on MSNBC television shows, Fineman discontinued writing for MSNBC.com in 2010 when he joined The Huffington Post.

Huffington Post
In 2010, Fineman moved from Newsweek to become senior politics editor at The Huffington Post. In 2011, when The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL, he was named editorial director of AOL Huffington Post Media Group. Fineman maintains editorial oversight over The Huffington Post's overall coverage, and is also involved in "working to integrate AOL news and information brands" such as Patch Media. While under Fineman's editorial oversight, The Huffington Post won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories it published about wounded veterans, titled "Beyond the Battlefield."

Fineman has been closely involved in managing The Huffington Post's coverage of the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. In February 2012, he announced the return of an election-year program called "OffTheBus," which invites citizen journalists to participate in covering the political campaign by creating and submitting blog posts, videos and photos relevant to their local area.

Television career
According to The New York Times, Fineman is "one of the more recognizable pundits on cable television." His television career began with PBS’ Washington Week in Review, where he participated as a regular panelist from 1983 to 1995. He also made regular appearances on CNN’s Capital Gang Sunday between 1995 and 1998.

MSNBC
Fineman is a political analyst for NBC News, contributing reports to the network and its cable television affiliate, MSNBC. As of 2012, he maintains an exclusive television contract with NBC. As part of this contract, Fineman appears frequently on Hardball with Chris Matthews, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and The Rachel Maddow Show.

In his interview with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC regarding the 2010 Senate special election in Massachusetts, Fineman commented on Scott Brown's TV ads: "Maybe not in Massachusetts, but maybe in some places, there are codes, there are images, ah, you know, there are pickup trucks, uh, you could say there was a racial aspect to it one way or another." This racism accusation was criticized by Ed Morrissey on Hot Air, Mark Steyn in OC Register, and by  Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Ralph R. Reiland.

Guest commentator
Over the course of his career as a political analyst, Fineman has appeared as a guest contributor on several public affairs television shows, including: Nightline, Face the Nation, Larry King Live, Fox News Sunday, Charlie Rose, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Fineman worked with Ted Koppel to produce special reports for Nightline on Ross Perot and Pat Robertson. He appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewartin 2008 and The Colbert Report in 2009.

Author
In 2008, Fineman wrote a book titled The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country . Published by Random House, the book became a national best-seller, having been listed on the New York Times and Washington Post best-seller lists. "The primary goal of the book, Fineman writes, is to "cut through the noise of the day," unveiling the core themes and arguments that simmer under our various public debates. "The earthquakes and lava eruptions we see and hear every day, whether at Daily Kos or the Drudge Report, whether on O'Reilly or NPR, are merely visible expression of deeper forces," he writes. However, if you know your political and historic turf, he argues, "you can separate what is useful from what is mere bombast and entertainment." In the midst of the rather bombastic and always entertaining 2008 presidential campaigns, where many debates devolve into "he said," "she said," and various denials, dissembling, and vituperation regarding what he or she said, this would be a useful skill indeed."

- Heather Wilhelm

Film career
The political documentary Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story included interviews with Howard Fineman, due to his familiarity with several GOP campaigns which Lee Atwater was involved in. Variety described Fineman's commentary in a review of the documentary, stating: "Columnist Howard Fineman's insight is especially pointed: Atwater's knack for feeding the press phony information indicated a view that politics itself was phony."