Meet Evan Thomas

Published May 13, 2010 at 8:09 p.m.
The parallel careers of Newsweek's premier wordsmith
Narrative is the throughline in the professional life of Evan Thomas...

READ: An interview with Evan Thomas by Peter Kadzis VIEW:Photos of Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, Henry Cabot Lodge and more from The War Lovers

Narrative is the throughline in the professional life of Evan Thomas.

As a panelist on PBS’s Inside Washington, Thomas participates in a weekly examination of close-order maneuvering among the nation’s governing and, in the process, helps define political reality — at least for the audience slice that favors natural fibers and fair-trade coffee.

Each semester at Princeton, in a course called “The Literature of Fact,” Thomas teaches 16 would-be journalists the mechanics of characterization and pacing, the craft of reporting and interviewing, and the inside art of, well, narrative.

At Newsweek, Thomas’s home for the past 24 years, he enjoys the seigniorial title “editor at large,” suggesting authority unencumbered by administrative worry. (Although Thomas no doubt enjoyed his fill of office politics as the newsweekly’s onetime Washington bureau chief — and perhaps again last week, when Newsweek’s parent, the Washington Post, put the financially strapped publication up for sale.)

With more than 100 cover stories to his credit, Thomas knows how to earn his keep; a 1998 National Magazine Award for his account of the soap-saga that followed Monica Lewinsky’s service to President Bill Clinton established a pedigree; and a 2005 National Magazine Award to Newsweek for its 50,000-word mini-epic on the 2004 presidential election — written by Thomas — honed a reputation that cuts mustard in Georgetown and at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Impressive stuff. More so when one considers that these are only Thomas’s day jobs.

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