Contact: Caitlin Graf, The Nation, press [at] thenation.com, 212-209-5400
New York, NY – September 23, 2015 – The Nation, America’s oldest weekly magazine of politics and culture, today announced the appointment of Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) as national affairs correspondent. In her new capacity, she will write political commentary several times a week for the magazine’s freshly redesigned website and frequent features for the print edition of the magazine. Walsh begins October 5, 2015 and is based in New York City.
“We’re heading into a crucial election in which the identities of both political parties are wildly unsettled,” says Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel. “The centrist Democratic wing is facing a rousing challenge from the party’s populist and social movement base. Meanwhile, the Republican establishment is on the ropes, fending off threats from billionaire and celebrity insurgents. In this moment, I can’t think of any one better to bring history to bear on this moment and cut through the spin than Joan Walsh.”
“Joan’s deep knowledge of American political history and her keen ability to focus on what’s signal, and not what’s noise, will be an invaluable contribution to The Nation’s stellar team of political reporters,” adds executive editor Richard Kim.
A prolific writer on American politics and culture, Walsh joins The Nation from Salon.com, the pioneering liberal website where she was editor-at-large. She had previously served as Salon’s very first news editor and editor-in-chief for six years.
“The stakes for the US in 2016 are incredibly high, and I’m happy to be joining The Nation at this pivotal time,” says Walsh. “I’ve loved my time at Salon, but now, as we face the Donald Trump farce and mull the meaning of Bernie Sanders’s surge, I’m thrilled to have the ballast of a magazine that’s spent 150 years chronicling American history, to help me take the long view. I look forward to a long collaboration with Katrina vanden Heuvel and Richard Kim, two of the smartest editors I know.”
Walsh will remain a political analyst for MSNBC, where she’s a regular on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and “All In with Chris Hayes,” and has appeared on numerous other national shows across CNN, HBO, FOX, PBS, and NPR.
She is the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America, which the Philadelphia Daily News called “one of the best books of 2012 – and even more relevant now,” and Hardball host Chris Matthews deemed “engaging, thoughtful, provocative, utterly persuasive.” An avid baseball fan, she’s also the co-author of Splash Hit: The Pacific Bell Park Story, about the building of the San Francisco Giants legendary waterfront stadium.
Before joining Salon, Walsh worked as a consultant on education and poverty issues for community groups and foundations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation. She’s written for publications ranging from Vogue to The Nation, and for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Walsh joins a prolific stable of Nation writers, columnists and editors who will provide in-depth reporting throughout the campaign season that takes seriously outside voices and alternative perspectives in the lead up to 2016. Nation voices—including Eric Alterman, Ari Berman, Zoë Carpenter, William Greider, D.D. Guttenplan, Dani McClain, John Nichols, Katha Pollitt, Mychal Denzel Smith, Patricia Williams, Kai Wright, Gary Younge, George Zornick, and more—will move past the horse race to provide timely analysis and reporting; crucial context to breaking news; and evaluate dynamic, pressing and under-reported news on issues of race, immigration, inequality, labor, health, social justice, voting rights, women’s rights, and American democracy.
For booking requests or further information, please see contact information above.
About the magazine:
Founded in 1865, The Nation is America’s oldest weekly magazine, serving as a critical, independent voice in American journalism and a platform for investigative reporting and spirited debate on issues of import to the progressive community. Through changing times and fashions, The Nation and TheNation.com offer consistently informed and inspired reporting and analysis of breaking news, politics, social issues and the arts—never faltering in our editorial commitment to what Nation Publisher Emeritus Victor Navasky has called “a dissenting, independent, trouble-making, idea-launching journal of critical opinion.”
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