Published: October 2008
Since joining the staff of U.S. News and World Report a year after graduating, Rick Newman ’88 has written about “war, politics, recession, extravagance, hurricanes, offshoring, corporate scandals, China, and many other topics on the national agenda.” As the current deputy business editor, he is now covering the greatest economic upheaval since the Great Depression. At the beginning of October, when stock market gyrations dominated the headlines, he concentrated on the fundamentals. “Forget the Stock Market, Worry About Jobs” was the title of his October 9 piece, in which he cited unemployment projections of 7 to 8 percent in the coming year. “Those are steep numbers that ought to be getting more attention,” he wrote, “and probably would, if the free-falling stock market weren’t scaring retirees into applying for jobs at McDonald’s.”
Winner of numerous journalism awards, including a National Press Club Consumer Journalism Award, Newman has coauthored two books on recent history. Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Minh Trail (Presidio, 2006), written with Don Shepperd, received high praise from The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews. Last summer, Presidio published Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9-11, written with firefighter Patrick Creed. “Creed and Newman rescued a piece of history from the ashes,” wrote Washington Post reviewer John Maclean.
“I love the thrill of finding big stories that simply need to be told,” Newman writes. “I try to make the connections between the things consumers care most about and the abstruse workings of the global economy. Oh, and point out the many myths and follies of our hyperbolic media. Busy times for that.”
