Jeff Greenfield | |
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![]() Jeff Greenfield at Miller Center, 2011 | |
Born | Jeffrey Greenfield June 10, 1943 New York City, U.S. |
Education | University of Wisconsin (BA) Yale University (LLB) |
Occupation(s) | Television journalist, author |
Notable credit | CBS Evening News Correspondent (2007–2011) |
Title | Senior Political Correspondent |
Spouses |
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Children | 2 |
Website | www |
Henry Jeffrey Greenfield (born June 10, 1943) is an American television journalist, lawyer, and author. [2] [3]
He was born in New York City, to Benjamin and Helen E. Greenfield. [4] [5] He grew up in Manhattan and graduated in 1960 from the Bronx High School of Science. He has a sister, Janet Greenfield Elmo. [6]
In 1964, he graduated with honors, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Cardinal . [5] While at the university, Greenfield was inducted into the Iron Cross (Secret Society). [5] In 1966, Greenfield graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Laws degree from Yale Law School, where he was a Note and Comment editor of the Yale Law Journal . [5]
Greenfield was hired as a speechwriter for the 1968 presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Greenfield assisted with RFK's speech, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", that he delivered the day after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. [7]
Greenfield was chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor John Lindsay and also worked for seven years with political consultant David Garth. [5]
Over the course of his journalistic career, Greenfield has reported mainly on domestic politics and the media, with occasional pieces on cultural matters. He appeared on the Firing Line television program as early as 1968. For five seasons, he hosted the national public television series "CEO Exchange" where he featured in-depth interviews with high-profile chief executive officers. He served as media commentator for CBS News from 1979 to 1983 and as political and media analyst for ABC News from 1983 to 1997, often appearing on the Nightline program. He was a senior analyst at CNN from 1998 to 2007. On May 1, 2007, Greenfield returned to CBS News, where he served as a senior political correspondent until April 2011. [8] He hosted PBS's "Need to Know" from May 7, 2010, to June 28, 2013. [9] [10] More recently he has done political commentary on NBC Nightly News .
He has also authored or contributed to fourteen books and has written for Time , The New York Times , National Lampoon , Slate , and POLITICO Magazine. [11] [12] He wrote one novel, The People's Choice , with a plot that centers on the Electoral College.
Greenfield has won five Emmy Awards, [13] two for his reporting from South Africa (1985 and 1990) and one for a profile of H. Ross Perot (1992). His bestseller Then Everything Changed was a finalist for the 2011 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Long Form.
Greenfield has been married three times.
Before joining CNN, Greenfield was a political and media analyst for ABC News (1983-97), appearing primarily on "Nightline" and delivering weekly commentaries for "World News" Sunday. Previously, he was the media commentator for CBS News (1979-83). Greenfield has also appeared on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" and PBS' "We Interrupt This Week." He was the anchor of PBS' "CEOExchange," a limited-run series, for five seasons.
I was basing this on what they had done during the big controversy in 1962 when the steel companies raised their prices and President Kennedy felt they had broken their word to him. This was all about keeping down steel prices and damping down inflation, so the Kennedy administration and Robert Kennedy in particular used the power they had in a way that would have been highly, highly controversial had it become known. They were using tax returns of the steel executives and they were threatening anti-trust actions. So I extrapolated from that, if that's what they did to stop the steel price increases, I think they would have used every means fair and not so fair to keep the story from bringing him down.
In June, he wed Dena Sklar, a former associate director at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Media related to Jeff Greenfield at Wikimedia Commons