Victor Saul Navasky

Victor Saul Navasky (born July 5, 1932) is an American journalist, editor, publisher, author and professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995, and its publisher and editorial director 1995 to 2005. In November 2005 he became the publisher emeritus. Navasky's book Naming Names (1980) is considered a definitive take on the Hollywood blacklist. For it he won a 1982 National Book Award for Nonfiction.^{[1][lower-alpha 1]}

Early life and education

Navasky was born in New York City, the son of Esther (Goldberg) and Macy Navasky.^[2] In 1946, when he was in the eighth grade, he helped to raise money for the Irgun Zvai Leumi — by passing a contribution basket at performances of Ben Hecht’s play, A Flag is Born.^[3]

He is a graduate of Swarthmore College (1954), where he was Phi Beta Kappa with high honors in the social sciences, and Yale Law School (1959). While at Yale, he co-founded and edited the political satire magazine Monocle.

Career

Before joining The Nation, Navasky was an editor at The New York Times Magazine.^[4] He also wrote a monthly column about the publishing business ("In Cold Print") for the Times Book Review.

Navasky was named the editor of The Nation in 1978. In that forum, for many years, he was immortalized in Calvin Trillin's Uncivil Liberties column as "the wily and parsimonious Victor S. Navasky," or "The W. & P." for short.

In 1994, while on a year's leave of absence from The Nation, he served first as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and then as a senior fellow at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center at Columbia University. When he returned to The Nation, he led a group of investors in buying the magazine, and became its publisher.

Navasky has also served as a Guggenheim Fellow, a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and Ferris Visiting Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities and has contributed articles and reviews to numerous magazines and journals of opinion.

In addition to his Nation responsibilities, Navasky is also Director of the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism at Columbia University, a member of the Board of Independent Diplomat, and a regular commentator on the public radio program Marketplace.

In 2005, Navasky was named chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR). This appointment engendered some controversy; as Navasky's name did not appear on the masthead, critics on the political right saw this as hiding that, despite the magazine's purported lack of political bias, a "major left-wing polemicist is calling the shots at CJR without any mention on the masthead."^[5]

In 2005, Navasky received the George Polk Book Award^[6] given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. He serves on the boards of the Authors Guild, International PEN and the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Marriage and family

Navasky, who has three children, lives in New York City, with his wife, Anne (Strongin) Navasky.

Publications

• Kennedy Justice (Atheneum, 1971)
• Naming Names (Viking, 1980); a book concerning the Hollywood blacklist
• The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (with Christopher Cerf), 1984, 1998, (ISBN 0-679-77806-3)
• A Matter of Opinion (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2005) (ISBN 0-374-29997-8)
• Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq), (with Christopher Cerf), 2008, (ISBN 1-4165-6993-6)
• The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power, (Knopf 2013) (ISBN 978-0307957207)

Magazines with which Navasky has been associated

• Monocle (founding editor)
• The Nation (editor, later publisher)
• Columbia Journalism Review (chairman)

Notes

References

External links

• Official website
• Columbia Journalism School profile page
• Works by or about Victor Saul Navasky in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Videos of 2010 Delacorte Magazine Lectures, moderated by Victor Navasky
• 1984 audio interview of Victor Navasky, RealAudio at Wired for Books.org with Don Swaim
• The Bat Segundo Show #64 (2006 podcast interview with Navasky)
• 2008 Interview with Victor Navasky and Christopher Cerf about their book, Mission Accomplished! (or How We Won the War in Iraq), on Bill Moyers' Journal
• Interview with Victor Navasky on Barack Obama and his politics for change by Paul Jay
• A film clip "The Open Mind - A Matter of Opinion, Part I (2005)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive
• A film clip "The Open Mind - A Matter of Opinion, Part II (2005)" is available for free download at the Internet Archive