Jeff Greenfield

Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Greenfield at Miller Center, 2011
Born
Jeffrey Greenfield

(1943-06-10) June 10, 1943 (age 81)
New York City, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Wisconsin (BA)
Yale University (LLB)
Occupation(s)Television journalist, author
Notable creditCBS Evening News Correspondent (2007–2011)
TitleSenior Political Correspondent
Spouses
  • Harriet Carmichael
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1968; div. 1993)​
  • Karen Anne Gannett[1]
    ​
    ​
    (m. 1993, divorced)​
  • Dena Sklar
    ​
    (m. 2002)​
Children2
Websitewww.jeffgreenfield.net

Henry Jeffrey Greenfield (born June 10, 1943) is an American television journalist, lawyer, and author.[2][3]

Early life and education

He was born in New York City, to Benjamin and Helen E. Greenfield.[4][5] He grew up in Manhattan and graduated in 1960 from the Bronx High School of Science. He has a sister, Janet Greenfield Elmo.[6]

In 1964, he graduated with honors, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Cardinal.[5] While at the university, Greenfield was inducted into the Iron Cross (Secret Society).[5] In 1966, Greenfield graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Laws degree from Yale Law School, where he was a Note and Comment editor of the Yale Law Journal.[5]

Career

Greenfield was hired as a speechwriter for the 1968 presidential campaign of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Greenfield assisted with RFK's speech, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence", that he delivered the day after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.[7]

Greenfield was chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor John Lindsay and also worked for seven years with political consultant David Garth.[5]

Over the course of his journalistic career, Greenfield has reported mainly on domestic politics and the media, with occasional pieces on cultural matters. He appeared on the Firing Line television program as early as 1968. For five seasons, he hosted the national public television series "CEO Exchange" where he featured in-depth interviews with high-profile chief executive officers. He served as media commentator for CBS News from 1979 to 1983 and as political and media analyst for ABC News from 1983 to 1997, often appearing on the Nightline program. He was a senior analyst at CNN from 1998 to 2007. On May 1, 2007, Greenfield returned to CBS News, where he served as a senior political correspondent until April 2011.[8] He hosted PBS's "Need to Know" from May 7, 2010, to June 28, 2013.[9][10] More recently he has done political commentary on NBC Nightly News.

He has also authored or contributed to fourteen books and has written for Time, The New York Times, National Lampoon, Slate, and POLITICO Magazine.[11][12] He wrote one novel, The People's Choice, with a plot that centers on the Electoral College.

Greenfield has won five Emmy Awards,[13] two for his reporting from South Africa (1985 and 1990) and one for a profile of H. Ross Perot (1992). His bestseller Then Everything Changed was a finalist for the 2011 Sidewise Award for Alternate History, Long Form.

Personal life

Greenfield has been married three times.

  • His first wife was Carrie Carmichael, an author, whom he divorced in February 1993. They have two children: daughter Casey, also a Yale Law School graduate, and son David. Casey married screenwriter Matt Manfredi in 2004 and they divorced in 2006. Casey has a son with CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.[14][3]
  • On April 24, 1993, Greenfield married Karen Anne Gannett,[15] from whom he is now divorced.
  • In June 2002, he married Dena Sklar, a real estate broker.[16] They live in Santa Barbara, California, and New York City.[17]

Greenfield has seven grandchildren.[18][19]

Books

  • with Jerry Bruno, The Advance Man. William Morrow. 1971. ASIN B000K0GKVS.
  • with Jack Newfield, A Populist Manifesto: The Making of A New Majority. Praeger Publishers. 1972. ASIN B001NC8Q1E.
  • No Peace, No Place: Excavations Along the Generational Fault. Doubleday. 1973. ISBN 978-0-385-01936-1.
  • Television: The First Fifty Years. Abrams. 1977. ISBN 978-0-8109-1651-7.
  • Jeff Greenfield's Book of Books. National Lampoon. 1979. ISBN 978-0-930368-37-1.
  • Playing to Win: An Insider's Guide to Politics. Simon and Schuster. 1980. ISBN 978-0671247621.
  • The People's Choice: A Novel. Putnam. 1995. ISBN 0-452-27705-1.
  • Oh, Waiter, One Order of Crow! Inside the Strangest Presidential Election Finish in American History. Putnam. 2001. ISBN 978-0-399-14776-0.
  • Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2011. ISBN 978-0-399-15706-6.
  • 43*: When Gore Beat Bush—A Political Fable. 2012. ISBN 978-1-614-52046-7.
  • If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History. G.P. Putnam's Sons. 2013. ISBN 978-0-399-16696-9.

References

  1. ^ Plummer, William (December 4, 1995). "Electoral College Humor". People. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  2. ^ CBS News
  3. ^ a b Finn, Robin (February 18, 2012). "Casey Greenfield v. the World". The New York Times. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  4. ^ New York Times: "Paid Notice: Deaths GREENFIELD, HELEN E. October 17, 2001
  5. ^ a b c d e "People - Jeff Greenfield". WNYC. Archived from the original on May 20, 2012. Retrieved March 22, 2021. Before joining CNN, Greenfield was a political and media analyst for ABC News (1983-97), appearing primarily on "Nightline" and delivering weekly commentaries for "World News" Sunday. Previously, he was the media commentator for CBS News (1979-83). Greenfield has also appeared on William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" and PBS' "We Interrupt This Week." He was the anchor of PBS' "CEOExchange," a limited-run series, for five seasons.
  6. ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths GREENFIELD, HELEN E." The New York Times. October 18, 2001. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  7. ^ Newfield, Jack (1988). Robert Kennedy: A Memoir (reprint ed.). New York: Penguin Group. pp. 248–250. ISBN 0-452-26064-7.
  8. ^ Kurtz, Howard (March 30, 2007). "CNN Analyst Jeff Greenfield to Join CBS". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 9, 2008.
  9. ^ "Need To Know Renewed By PBS Through June 2013". prnewswire.com (Press release). Retrieved March 21, 2021.
  10. ^ "May 3, 2013: Retraining America". Need to Know. PBS. April 30, 2013. Retrieved March 21, 2021.
  11. ^ Greenfield, Jeff. "The Ugly History of Stephen Miller's 'Cosmopolitan' Epithet". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  12. ^ "Jeff Greenfiedl". X.com. Retrieved May 5, 2024.
  13. ^ "3 Reasons Not to Worry About Trump's Fourth of July—and 1 Big Reason to Worry". Politico. July 3, 2019. Retrieved July 3, 2019.
  14. ^ New York Times: "Casey Greenfield, Matt Manfredi" November 21, 2004
  15. ^ "WEDDINGS; Jeff Greenfield and Karen Gannett". The New York Times. April 25, 1993.
  16. ^ LANE, TAHREE (November 2, 2013). "Jeff Greenfield to discuss book on what might have been had JFK lived". The Blade. Toledo, Ohio: The Blade. Archived from the original on March 22, 2021. Retrieved March 22, 2021. I was basing this on what they had done during the big controversy in 1962 when the steel companies raised their prices and President Kennedy felt they had broken their word to him. This was all about keeping down steel prices and damping down inflation, so the Kennedy administration and Robert Kennedy in particular used the power they had in a way that would have been highly, highly controversial had it become known. They were using tax returns of the steel executives and they were threatening anti-trust actions. So I extrapolated from that, if that's what they did to stop the steel price increases, I think they would have used every means fair and not so fair to keep the story from bringing him down.
  17. ^ Scott, Walter. "What has happened to CNN's Jeff Greenfield?". Dayton Daily News. No. November 3, 2002. Dayton, Ohio: Newspapers.com. p. 177. Retrieved March 22, 2021. In June, he wed Dena Sklar, a former associate director at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
  18. ^ "Veteran political analyst Jeff Greenfield speaking to campus, alumni about turbulent events of 1968 (and today)". Marietta College. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  19. ^ "Jeff Greenfield". Institute of Politics. University of Chicago. Retrieved March 22, 2021.[permanent dead link]


Media related to Jeff Greenfield at Wikimedia Commons