David Binder (journalist)

David Binder
David Binder at 81
Born	(1931-02-22) February 22, 1931 London, England
Nationality	American
Education	Harvard University, A.B.(cum laude), 1953; University of Cologne, graduate study, 1953–54
Occupation	Journalist, Author
Religion	Society of Friends
Spouse(s)	Dr. Helga Wagner (1959–present)
Children	Julia, Andrea, Alena

David Binder (born February 22, 1931) is an American journalist and author. He was a reporter for the New York Times from 1961 to 2004 ^[1] serving as a foreign correspondent in Berlin in 1961 where he reported on the building of the Berlin wall;^[2] in the Balkans, based in Belgrade 1963–1966; in Germany based in Bonn and later Berlin, 1967 to 1973. During the latter period he reported on the gradual rapprochement between East and West Germany, and on the Prague Spring of 1968. He was then transferred to Washington, D.C as a diplomatic correspondent, later as serving as the bureau's assistant news editor, and again as a reporter. He was repeatedly sent abroad as a special correspondent for The Times to report on the decline of the Soviet Bloc in 1987, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Communist regimes in the German Democratic Republic,^[3] Romania, Albania and Yugoslavia in 1990-1992. He traveled to the Balkans to report on the civil wars that brought about the dissolution of Yugoslavia (1990-1995) and the post-Communist regimes in Bulgaria and Romania . He also reported on the unification of West and East Germany.

In 2000-2001 he again went to the Balkans to report on the burgeoning sex trade and drug smuggling in the region for MSNBC. Early in his career he worked briefly as a science reporter for The Times, returning more than three decades later to reporting on wildlife biology. Over the years he also contributed to other publications including The Reporter, The Nation, The New Republic, Foreign Policy (published in Washington), Politika (a daily published in Belgrade), Vreme, (a weekly published in Belgrade) Weltwoche (Swiss weekly published in Zurich), der Spiegel, (a German weekly published in Hamburg) Stern, (a German magazine(published in Hamburg) Neues Deutschland, (a daily published in Berlin), Blaetter fuer deutsche und internationale Politik (published in Bonn) and The Wilson Quarterly (published in Washington). In 1970 he was elected president of the Verein der Auslaendischen Presse (Foreign Press Association) of Germany. In 1989 he was appointed to the editorial advisory board of the newly created Mediterranean Quarterly.^[4] In its first issue he published an article entitled The End of the Bloc, saying the Soviet Union's East European empire was "falling apart before our eyes." This appeared before the opening of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.

Early life

Binder was born on February 22, 1931, in London, England along with his twin sister Deborah, to American parents Carroll (a newspaperman), and Dorothy (Walton) Binder. He was raised in Highland Park, Illinois in the suburbs of Chicago until the age of 13, when he attended George School,^[5] a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard, before going to the University of Cologne to study on Fulbright Fellowship. He worked an assistant in American literature at the Salzburg Seminar in Austria summer of 1953.^[6]

Career

• Carbondale Free Press-Southern-Illinoisan (summer, 1951)
• Louisville Times, Reporter (1954–56)
• Institute of Current World Affairs, fellow in Germany, (1957–59)
• Daily Mail,(London) Reporter in Berlin, (1959–60)
• Minneapolis Tribune, copy editor, (1960–61)
• The New York Times, Reporter, (1961–2004),^[1]
• President of The Foreign Press Association of Germany,(1970)^[7]

Books

• Berlin: East and West in Pictures, 1963 ISBN 978-0806910185
• The Other German: Willy Brandt's Life and Times, 1976 ISBN 978-0915220090
• Children of a New Fatherland. Germany's Post-War Right-Wing Politics (Introduction), 1999 ISBN 978-1860644580
• Forward to Media Cleansing, Dirty Reporting: Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia, 2005 ISBN 978-1882383306
• Fare Well Illyria, 2013 ISBN 978-6155225741 ^[8]

References