Michael Grunwald (born August 16, 1970) is an American journalist and author who writes about public policy and national politics. He worked as a journalist for ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' and ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

''. He is presently a senior writer for ''

Politico Magazine ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and inter ...

''. He is the author of two widely acclaimed books, ''The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida and the Politics of Paradise'' (2006) and '' The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era'' (2012). He is currently working on a book for Simon & Schuster about food, land and climate change.

Life and career

Education and occupation

Grunwald graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1992. He started his career as a metro reporter for ''The Boston Globe'', then joined ''The Washington Post'', where he served as a national reporter, New York bureau chief and outlook essayist; he wrote the ''Washington Posts lead news story on the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

. In 2007, he became a senior national correspondent for ''

'', where he wrote cover stories on topics like the future of

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, the decline of the Republican Party, and 2009 Person of the Year Ben Bernanke. HIs cover story about the policy roots of the Hurricane Katrina disaster won a $50,000 award from the Understanding Government Foundation; he donated the award to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

charities. His 2012 cover story "One Nation Subsidized" used his own daily life in Miami as well as government data to make the case that "most Americans are makers ''and'' takers, proud of our making, blind to our taking." Grunwald was also a provocative columnist at ''Time'', defending the failed Solyndra loan and arguing against tax deductions for charitable donations. Grunwald joined ''

'' in 2014, where he helped start the public policy site

The Agenda ''The Agenda with Steve Paikin'', or simply ''The Agenda'', is the flagship current affairs television program of TVOntario (TVO), Ontario's public broadcaster. Anchor Steve Paikin states that the show practices long-form journalism. Each hour-l ...

. He has mostly written for''Politico Magazine'' about wonky topics like the federal government's dysfunctional $3 trillion portfolio of credit programs, the failure of U.S. transportation policy and

President Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

's policy legacy. He has also written longform political stories about the 2016 campaign, America's political culture wars, and the growth of

Trumpism Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. '' Trumpists ...

through the

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

retirement community The Villages.

Books

Grunwald wrote his first book, ''The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise'' (2007) after doing a four-part series for ''The Washington Post'' in 2002. It's the story of man and nature on the Florida peninsula, focusing on the steady destruction and troubled attempted restoration of the Everglades, and it's still considered one of the indispensable histories of Florida. Grunwald also wrote the foreword to the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas classic about the Everglades, ''RIver of Grass''. His next book was ''The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era'' (2012), was a NYT best-seller, the inside story of the Obama administration and its response to the

Great Recession The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline, i.e. a recession, observed in national economies globally that occurred from late 2007 into 2009. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country (see map). At ...

. It is about the Obama administration and its response to the

financial crisis of 2007–2008 Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fi ...

."Michael Grunwald"
, ''Time''. Accessed 19 August 2013

19 August 2013. In that book, he describes the discussions and debates that led to the government's anti-recession measures such as the

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (), nicknamed the Recovery Act, was a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. Developed in response to the Gr ...

(ARRA). Taking a positive review of the President's efforts, Grunwald defends the economic measures as full of important, long-term investments while charging Republican Party opponents as being hypocritical and self-serving. Grunwald was also the ghostwriter for Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's memoir about the 2008 financial crisis, ''Stress Test''. Grunwald has been criticized for some of his own writings defending the government's response to the crisis, like his critique of the film ''The Big Short'' and his critique of Bernie Sanders' plan to break up big banks.

Personal life

Raised in

Greenvale, New York Greenvale is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay in Nassau County, on the North Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. It is considered part of the Greater Roslyn area, which is ...

, Grunwald resides in Miami with his wife Cristina Dominguez, a lawyer who is now the executive director of Sai Aryurvedic Institute, and their two children.

Awards

Grunwald has also won numerous journalism awards, including the George Polk Awards for

National Reporting This Pulitzer Prize has been awarded since 1942 for a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs in the United States. In its first six years (1942–1947), it was called the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting – National. L ...

and the

Worth Bingham Prize The Worth Bingham Prize, also referred to as the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting, is an annual journalism award which honors: "newspaper or magazine investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public inter ...

for

investigative reporting Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years res ...

. ''The Swamp'' and ''The New New Deal'' both received the gold medal for non-fiction in the Florida Book Awards.

Twitter controversy

In 2011, Grunwald posted a message on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

that he did not care that

Anwar al-Awlaki Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (also spelled al-Aulaqi, al-Awlaqi; ar, أنور العولقي, Anwar al-‘Awlaqī; April 21 or 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strik ...

, an American citizen, was killed in a

drone strike Drone warfare is a form of aerial warfare using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France, India, Pakist ...

by the US government, in 2011.Goyette, Braden
"Michael Grunwald, Time Magazine Reporter, Sends Out Shocking Tweet About Julian Assange"
'' Huffington Post''. Accessed 19 August 2013. In August 2013, Grunwald's tweet "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange," a criticism of the

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

founder, caused widespread outrage. Grunwald quickly

tweeted Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

his regrets: "It was a dumb tweet. I'm sorry. I deserve the backlash."

References

External links

Personal websiteGrunwald on Time
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grunwald, Michael 1970 births Living people American male journalists Harvard College alumni People from Greenville (town), New York Journalists from New York (state)