Victor S. Navasky

Victor Saul Navasky (born July 5, 1932) is an American journalist, editor and academic. He is publisher emeritus of ''The Nation'' and George T. Delacorte Professor Emeritus of Professional Practice in Magazine Journalism at Columbia University. He was editor of ''The Nation'' from 1978 until 1995 and its publisher and editorial director from 1995 to 2005. 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."National Book Awards – 1982"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-11.
This was the award for paperback "General Nonfiction".
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction, with dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories. Most of the paperback award-winners were reprints, including this one.

He was awarded the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard's Nieman Foundation in 2017.

Early life and education

Navasky was born in New York City, the son of Esther (Goldberg) and Macy Navasky. 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''.

He is a graduate of Swarthmore College (1954), where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received high honors in the social sciences. While serving in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956, he was stationed at Fort Richardson in Alaska. Following his discharge, he enrolled in Yale Law School on the GI Bill and received his LL.B. in 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''. 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.

Navasky is a supporter of alleged Soviet spy Alger Hiss, having published vociferous defences of the man's innocence in ''The Nation'' both during his lifetime and after.

In 1994, while on a year's leave of absence from ''The Nation'', he served first as a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School 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 Fellowship, 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 (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."

In 2005, Navasky received the George Polk Awards, George Polk Book Award 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.

As of 2020, Navasky serves on the board of Defending Rights & Dissent.

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 (musician and television producer), Christopher Cerf), 1984, 1998, ()
* ''A Matter of Opinion'' (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2005) ()
* ''Mission Accomplished!'' (or ''How We Won the War in Iraq''), (with Christopher Cerf (musician and television producer), Christopher Cerf), 2008, ()
* ''The Art of Controversy: Political Cartoons and Their Enduring Power'', (Knopf 2013) ()

Magazines

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

Notes

References

External links

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Columbia Journalism School profile page
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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)


* [http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=74&jumival=330/ Interview with Victor Navasky on Barack Obama and his politics for change] by Paul Jay
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Victor S. Navasky Papers
'', Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives ar New York University.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Navasky, Victor
American male journalists
Columbia University faculty
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism faculty
Harvard Fellows
1932 births
Living people
Military personnel from New York City
Princeton University alumni
Swarthmore College alumni
Yale Law School alumni
George Polk Award recipients
National Book Award winners
The Nation editors
The New York Times editors
Waldorf school alumni
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Jewish American writers