Donald G. McNeil Jr.

Last updated

Donald McNeil Jr.
BornDonald Gerard McNeil Jr.
(1954-02-01) February 1, 1954 (age 70)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
OccupationJournalist
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley (BA)
SubjectsScience and health reporting
Years active1976–present
Notable worksZika: The Emerging Epidemic (2016)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1980;div. 2003)​

Donald Gerard McNeil Jr. (born February 1, 1954) is an American journalist. He was a science and health reporter for The New York Times where he reported on epidemics, including HIV/AIDS and the COVID-19 pandemic. His reporting on COVID-19 earned him widespread recognition for being one of the earliest and most prominent voices covering the pandemic.

Contents

In February 2021, McNeil resigned under pressure from The New York Times following reports that high-school students on a trip to Peru organized by the Times accused McNeil of making racially offensive remarks. After his resignation, McNeil published a lengthy response, disputing the high-school students' accusations and criticizing the Times. [1]

Early life and education

McNeil was born on February 1, 1954, in San Francisco. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975 with a bachelor's degree in rhetoric. [2]

Career

McNeil started at The New York Times in 1976 as a copy boy. [3] He left in 1979 to teach journalism at Columbia University while studying history. From 1995 to 2002, he was a foreign correspondent based in South Africa and France. It was during this time that McNeil began covering HIV/AIDS and took an interest in vaccine-preventable diseases.

In 2002, McNeil joined the science staff of The New York Times and was assigned to cover global health. McNeil's later work on a series of stories about diseases on the brink of eradication was awarded the top prize by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize in Journalism in 2006. [4]

In 2013, he was featured in an acclaimed documentary about AIDS drugs, Fire in the Blood . [5]

In late 2015, McNeil began covering the outbreak of the Zika virus for The New York Times. [6] He gained attention for his coverage of viral outbreaks. [7]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he became known for his early and persistent warnings about the severity of the situation. [8] McNeil appeared on The Daily to discuss COVID-19 on February 27, 2020, marking him as one of the first to bring widespread attention to the COVID-19 virus in the United States. [9] [10] He also interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci about Fauci's working relationship with President Donald Trump. [10] His early coverage and acclaimed writing made him one of the prominent journalists covering COVID-19. [11] [10] [12] He was the author of two of the fifteen articles about the coronavirus pandemic that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Times. [13] [14]

Contract negotiations with The New York Times

McNeil was part of a brief walkout during contract negotiations between newsroom members of the Newspaper Guild of New York and the management of The New York Times. [15] During negotiations on October 12, 2012, McNeil reported that 375 union members had walked out of the New York City offices and another 23 had walked out of the Washington D.C. newsroom. [16] At the time, union members had been without a contract for 18 months and talks over pension payments were at a standstill. McNeil was joined by many other prominent reporters and editors in directing harsh criticism at the paper. [17]

Dismissal from The New York Times

In 2019 McNeil accompanied a group of high school students on a New York Times sponsored trip to Peru. The purpose of the trip was for the students to learn about community-based healthcare in Peru. On January 28, 2021, The Daily Beast reported that multiple participants accused McNeil of repeatedly making racist and sexist remarks, including having used the word "nigger" in the context of discussing racist language, as well as "[using] stereotypes about Black teenagers". [10] McNeil initially released a very short statement to The Washington Post , saying "Don't believe everything you read", which led to 150 Times employees signing an internal letter on February 3, demanding an apology from McNeil. [12]

The New York Times said they had "disciplined Donald for statements and language that had been inappropriate and inconsistent with our values" after initial complaints in 2019, [12] writing that the Times "found [McNeil] had used bad judgment by repeating a racist slur in the context of a conversation about racist language". [10] On February 5, 2021, The New York Times announced that McNeil would be leaving. [18] [12] In the announcement McNeil apologized, saying that he had been "asked at dinner by a student whether [he] thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur. To understand what was in the video, [he] asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, [he] used the slur itself." [12]

In March 2021, McNeil published an essay on Medium contesting the students' allegations and criticizing the Times' handling of his case. [19] [20] [1] Describing his interactions with the high school students on the trip to Peru, McNeil wrote, "I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn't come across that way. And my bristliness makes me an imperfect pedagogue for sensitive teenagers." [21] [22]

Personal life

McNeil lives in Brooklyn. He was previously married to Suzanne Daley, also a journalist for the Times. He has two daughters and a stepson. [23] [24]

Books

Awards

Related Research Articles

<i>Tampa Bay Times</i> American daily newspaper

The Tampa Bay Times, called the St. Petersburg Times until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It is published by the Times Publishing Company, which is owned by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a nonprofit journalism school directly adjacent to the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus.

Richard Read is a freelance reporter based in Seattle, where he was a national reporter and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times from 2019 to 2021. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, he was a senior writer and foreign correspondent for The Oregonian, working for the Portland, Oregon newspaper from 1981 to 1986 and 1989 until 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesley Stahl</span> American journalist

Lesley Rene Stahl is an American television journalist. She has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS's 60 Minutes. She is known for her news and television investigations and award-winning foreign reporting. For her body of work she has earned various journalism awards including a Lifetime Achievement News and Documentary Emmy Award in 2003 for overall excellence in reporting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lester Holt</span> American journalist and news anchor (born 1959)

Lester Don Holt Jr. is an American journalist and news anchor for the weekday edition of NBC Nightly News, NBC Nightly News Kids Edition, and Dateline NBC. On June 18, 2015, Holt was made the permanent anchor of NBC Nightly News following the demotion of Brian Williams. Holt followed in the career footsteps of Max Robinson, an ABC News evening co-anchor, and became the first Black male solo anchor for a major network newscast.

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies is a non-profit journalism school and research organization in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. The school is the owner of the Tampa Bay Times newspaper and the International Fact-Checking Network. It also operates PolitiFact.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bret Stephens</span> American journalist (born 1973)

Bret Louis Stephens is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He has been an opinion columnist for The New York Times and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017. Since 2021, he has been the inaugural editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.

Celia Williams Dugger is an American journalist who is deputy science editor of The New York Times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Student Press Law Center</span> American non-profit organization promoting student press freedom

The Student Press Law Center (SPLC) is a non-profit organization that aims to promote, support and defend press freedom rights for student journalists at high schools and colleges in the United States. It is dedicated to student free-press rights and provides information, advice and legal assistance at no charge for students and educators.

Walter Robert Mears was an American journalist, author, and educator. Mears worked for the Associated Press (AP) from 1956 until his retirement in 2001. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of the 1976 United States presidential election. After retirement, he taught journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Peter Clark</span> American writer, editor and writing coach

Roy Peter Clark is an American writer, editor, and a writing coach. He is also senior scholar and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the founder of the National Writers Workshop. Clark has appeared on several radio and television talk shows, speaking about journalism ethics and other writing issues.

Lizette Alvarez is an American journalist, and has worked for more than two decades with The New York Times. She has served as the Miami bureau chief since January 2011. Alvarez has been a reporter for the New York Daily News, and TheMiami Herald.

Trymaine D. Lee is an American journalist. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Hurricane Katrina as part of a team at The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. From 2006 to 2010, Lee wrote for The New York Times and from early 2011 to November 2012 he was a senior reporter at The Huffington Post. Since then Lee has been a national reporter for MSNBC, where he writes for the network's digital arm, and hosts the podcast Into America.

<i>BuzzFeed News</i> Former American news website

BuzzFeed News was an American news website published by BuzzFeed beginning in 2011. It ceased posting new hard news content in May 2023. It published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was strongly criticized, and the FinCEN Files. It won the George Polk Award, The Sidney Award, the National Magazine Award, the National Press Foundation award, and the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wesley Lowery</span> American journalist

Wesley Lowery is an American journalist who has worked at both CBS News and The Washington Post. He was a lead on the Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement. In 2017, he became a CNN political contributor and in 2020 was announced as a correspondent for 60 in 6, a short-form spinoff of 60 Minutes for Quibi. Lowery is a former Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Fahrenthold</span> American journalist

David A. Fahrenthold is an American journalist who writes for The New York Times. Previously he wrote for The Washington Post. He has also served as a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. In 2017, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of Donald Trump and his alleged charitable givings, including the 2016 United States presidential election.

Stat is an American health-oriented news website launched on November 4, 2015, by John W. Henry, the owner of The Boston Globe. It is produced by Boston Globe Media and is headquartered in the Globe's own building in Boston. Its executive editor is Rick Berke, who formerly worked at both The New York Times and Politico. According to Kelsey Sutton of Politico, the website is Henry's "biggest and most ambitious standalone site yet". The site's name comes from the term "stat", short for statim, or "immediately"—a term that has long been used in medical contexts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manu Raju</span> American journalist

Manu Raju is an American journalist who serves as the chief congressional correspondent at the news network CNN, covering the United States Congress and campaign politics. He is also anchor of the Sunday edition of CNN's Inside Politics with Manu Raju. Raju previously reported for Politico as a senior Capitol Hill correspondent and for other D.C. news outlets as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weijia Jiang</span> American television journalist

Weijia Jiang is a Chinese-American television journalist and reporter. She is based in Washington, D.C., and has served as the Senior White House Correspondent for CBS News since July 2018. Jiang's question to President Donald Trump about the COVID-19 testing program in the United States during a White House press briefing received global attention and coverage.

Helen Branswell is a Canadian infectious diseases and global health reporter at Stat News. Branswell spent fifteen years as a medical reporter at The Canadian Press, where she led coverage of the Ebola, Zika, SARS and swine flu pandemics. She joined Stat News at its founding 2015, leading the website's coverage of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael Rothfeld is an American journalist and writer. He was a leader of The Wall Street Journal reporting team that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2019.

References

  1. 1 2 McCarthy, Tom (March 1, 2021). "Reporter says New York Times panicked over alleged racism case that led to his resignation". The Guardian . Retrieved March 2, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Poynter Fellowship in Journalism: Donald McNeil". communications.yale.edu. Office of Public Affairs & Communications, Yale University. May 27, 2016. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  3. ↑ "Philanthropy in Global Health: Speakers". baselgovernance.org. Basel Institute on Governance. Archived from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  4. ↑ Dunavan, Claire Panosian (August 2019). "Vaccine Confidential A Conversation with Donald G. McNeil Jr". The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 101 (2): 472–474. doi:10.4269/ajtmh.19-0427. ISSN   0002-9637. PMC   6685584 . PMID   31287040.
  5. ↑ Bale, Miriam (September 5, 2013). "'Fire in the Blood' Spotlights AIDS in Africa". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  6. 1 2 "'Zika: The Emerging Epidemic' Takes An In-Depth Look At The Virus". WBUR-FM . August 11, 2016. Retrieved February 9, 2021.
  7. ↑ Kiely, Kathy (April 22, 2020). "Global Journalist: Covering Two Deadly Viruses". KBIA . Retrieved February 9, 2021. But New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr.'s interest in what would become the Zika epidemic has made him something of an expert on viral outbreaks.
  8. ↑ Delkic, Melina (March 19, 2020). "Our Infectious Diseases Reporter on the 'Urgent' Response to the Coronavirus". The New York Times. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  9. ↑ "The Coronavirus Goes Global". The New York Times. February 27, 2020. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 Tani, Maxwell; Cartwright, Lachlan (January 28, 2021). "Star NY Times Reporter Accused of Using 'N-Word,' Making Other Racist Comments". The Daily Beast . Archived from the original on February 7, 2021. Retrieved January 28, 2021.
  11. ↑ Kang, Shinhee (December 15, 2020). "The best journalism of 2020: Covering the pandemic". Columbia Journalism Review . Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Pompeo, Joe (February 10, 2021). ""It's Chaos": Behind the Scenes of Donald McNeil's New York Times Exit". Vanity Fair . Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  13. ↑ Robertson, Katie (June 11, 2021). "Pulitzer Prizes Focus on Coverage of Pandemic and Law Enforcement". The New York Times. Retrieved June 27, 2021.
  14. ↑ Jones, Tom (June 14, 2021). "A special Poynter Report: Looking at this year's Pulitzer Prizes". Poynter. Retrieved June 27, 2021.
  15. ↑ Beaujon, Andrew (October 10, 2012). "Guild: New York Times management canceled today's negotiations, plans 'final offer' tomorrow". poynter.org. Poynter Institute . Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  16. ↑ Moos, Julie (October 8, 2012). "New York Times union members stage brief walkout to protest contract negotiations". poynter.org. Poynter Institute. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  17. ↑ "New York Times' Donald G. McNeil Jr. On Contract Talks: Management Has 'Acted Like Belligerent Idiots'". HuffPost . October 9, 2012. Retrieved February 10, 2021.
  18. ↑ Folkenflik, David (February 6, 2021). "Two Prominent 'New York Times' Journalists Depart Over Past Behavior". NPR . Archived from the original on February 6, 2021. Retrieved February 6, 2021.
  19. ↑ McNeil, Donald G. Jr. (March 1, 2021). "NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part One: Introduction". Medium. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  20. ↑ Tracy, Marc (March 1, 2021). "Ex-Times Reporter Who Used Racial Slur Publishes a Lengthy Defense". The New York Times. Retrieved March 2, 2021.
  21. ↑ McNeil, Donald G. Jr. (March 12, 2021). "NYTimes Peru N-Word, Part Four: What Happened in Peru?". Medium. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
  22. ↑ Moore, Thomas (March 1, 2021). "Ousted NYT reporter says he's been a jackal circled by jackals". The Hill. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
  23. ↑ "Donald G. McNeil Jr". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 7, 2010. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  24. ↑ Hannerz, Ulf (2012). Foreign News: Exploring the World of Foreign Correspondents. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 98. ISBN   978-0-226-92253-9.
  25. ↑ Horton, Richard (April 19, 2024). "Offline: America's reckoning". The Lancet. 403 (10436): 1525. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(24)00804-3 . ISSN   0140-6736. PMID   38642941.
  26. ↑ "2002 NABJ Award Winners". nabj.org. National Association of Black Journalists. Archived from the original on August 3, 2002. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
  27. ↑ "2006 OPC Award Winners". opcofamerica.org. Overseas Press Club of America. May 1, 2007. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved January 22, 2021.
  28. ↑ "2007: Donald McNeil, Jr. and Celia W. Dugger, "Disease on the Brink" New York Times". rfkcenter.org. Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights. Archived from the original on January 8, 2011. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  29. ↑ "2012 winners named in top health journalism awards". healthjournalism.org. Association of Health Care Journalists. February 25, 2013. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  30. ↑ "Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism: 2013 winners". healthjournalism.org. Association of Health Care Journalists. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  31. ↑ "New York Times Science and Health Reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. Wins Prestigious 2020 John Chancellor Award". journalism.columbia.edu. Columbia Journalism School. September 29, 2020. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved December 8, 2020.
  32. ↑ 2020 Chancellor Ceremony - Donald G. McNeil, Jr. Alfred I. duPont Awards. November 19, 2020. Retrieved February 9, 2021– via Vimeo.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.