Joseph "Joe" Nocera (born May 6, 1952 in Providence, Rhode Island)[1] is an American business journalist and author. He became a business columnist for The New York Times in April 2005. In March 2011, Nocera became a regular opinion columnist for The Times' Op-Ed page, writing on Tuesdays and Saturdays.[2] Nocera is also a business commentator for NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon.
Prior to joining The New York Times, Nocera worked at Fortune from 1995 to 2005, in a variety of positions, finally as editorial director. Nocera was the "Profit Motive" columnist at GQ from 1990 to 1995, and wrote the same column for Esquire from 1988 to 1990.
In the 1980s, Nocera was an editor at Newsweek; an executive editor of New England Monthly; and a senior editor at Texas Monthly. In the late 1970s he was an editor at The Washington Monthly.
Nocera earned a B.S. in journalism from Boston University in 1974, and lives in New York City.
Nocera's most recent book is All the Devils Are Here, co-written with Bethany McLean and released in 2010.
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Nocera's 1994 book, A Piece of the Action: How the Middle Class Joined the Money Class, won the New York Public Library's 1995 Helen Bernstein Award for best non-fiction book of the year.
Nocera also won three Gerald Loeb (1993, 1996, 2008) and three Hancock (1983, 1984, 1991) awards.[1]
He was a 2007 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary.
In a August 2011 column on the US debt ceiling crisis, Nocera compared "Tea Party Republicans" with terrorists, and wrote that they "have waged jihad on the American people" and suggested that they "can put aside their suicide vests".[3] This rhetoric was criticized by a number of media outlets.[4] In a followup column, Nocera writes "[it] most surprised me is how darned liberal I sound sometimes." He then apologized:
After comparing congressional negotiations with "hand-to-hand combat", Nocera concluded the column with "I won't be calling anybody names. That I can promise."[5]