ABOUT KENNETH T. WALSH

Kenneth T. Walsh is a widely known author and speaker and the award-winning White House correspondent and columnist for U.S. News & World Report.

 

Historian Douglas Brinkley has written, “No journalist today covers U.S. presidential politics with the same bedrock self-assurance, analytical thought, and literary aplomb as Ken Walsh.” He has covered the White House since 1986 and has won the most prestigious honors for reporting on the presidency, the Aldo Beckman Award in 1991 and 2007, and the Gerald R. Ford Prize in 1993, 1998, and 2009. In 2006, he won the Fitzwater Prize for Leadership in Public Communication presented by the Fitzwater Center at Franklin Pierce College. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Washington Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2009.

 

Walsh joined the magazine in 1984 as a congressional correspondent and has covered the presidency, presidential campaigns, and national politics since 1986.

 

Before joining the magazine, Walsh was a political reporter, columnist, and Washington correspondent for the Denver Post. Before that, he was a Denver-based reporter and editor for the Associated Press.

 

As an adjunct professorial lecturer in communication at American University in Washington, D.C., Walsh has taught courses on politics and the media, media ethics, how the media shape history, and the “PR presidency.” In 1998 he was named outstanding adjunct professor of the year.

 

Walsh was president of the White House Correspondents’ Association from 1994 to 1995. He served on the WHCA board for many years and started the association’s highly successful scholarship program. He has twice served as a judge for the Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards.

 

Walsh makes frequent television appearances on networks including ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN, and is often a guest on radio programs across the country. He appears every Sunday morning on WTOP in Washington to analyze news related to the presidency and politics. Walsh also gives frequent lectures on the presidency, the media, and politics.

 

Author of nine books:

Presidential Leadership in Crisis Defining Moments of the Modern Presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump;

Ultimate Insiders: White House Photographers and How They Shape History  (2017); Celebrity in Chief: A History of the Presidents and the Culture of Stardom (2015);  Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership (2013); Family of Freedom: Presidents and African Americans in the White House (2011); From Mount Vernon to Crawford: A History of the Presidents and Their Retreats (2005); Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes (2003); Ronald Reagan, Biography (1997), and Feeding the Beast: The White House Versus the Press (1996). Walsh’s freelance work has been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New Republic.

 

In reporting on the presidency, Walsh has traveled to more than 70 countries and covered a wide range of events, including many superpower summits and international conferences. He has conducted numerous interviews over the years with Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Ronald Reagan.

 

Walsh earned a master’s degree in communication from American University in Washington, D.C., and a B.A. in journalism from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He lives with his wife Barclay Walsh in Bethesda, Maryland. and Shady Side, Maryland. They have two children, Jean and Chris.