Steven Roberts

Steve Roberts has been a journalist for almost 50 years, covering some of the major events of his time, from the antiwar movement and student revolts of the 60s and 70s to President Reagan’s historic trip to Moscow in 1988 and twelve presidential election campaigns. After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude in 1964, he joined the New York Times as research assistant to James ‘Scotty’ Reston, then the paper’s Washington bureau chief. His 25-year career with the Times included assignments as bureau chief in Los Angeles and Athens, and as Congressional and White House correspondent. He was a senior writer at U.S. News for seven years, specializing in national politics and foreign policy. Roberts continues to write a nationally-syndicated newspaper column he previously co-wrote with his late wife, TV journalist Cokie Roberts. The column was named one of the ten most popular columns in America by Media Matters. In February of 2000 Steve and Cokie published From This Day Forward, an account of their marriage, as well as other marriages in American history. The New York Times called the book “inspiring and instructive” and it spent seven weeks on the Times bestseller list. Roberts also writes a bi-monthly column, Hometown, for Bethesda Magazine and is a regular book reviewer and travel writer for The Washington Post. His childhood memoir, My Fathers’ Houses, was published in the spring of 2005 and was featured at the National Book Festival in Washington. In 2009 he published From Every End of This Earth, the story of 13 immigrant families and the new lives they’ve made in America. The book, which was also featured at the National Book Festival, started life in the feature writing course he teaches at GW and is dedicated to his students. In 2011 he wrote Our Haggadah (with his wife Cokie), which was featured on many national TV shows, including This Week and Morning Joe.

A well-known commentator on many Washington-based TV shows, Roberts also appears regularly as a political analyst on the ABC radio network and was a substitute host on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show. As a teacher, he lectures widely on American politics and the role of the news media. Since 1997 he has been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he has taught for the last 23 years. His many honors include the Dirksen Award for covering Congress, the Wilbur Award for reporting on religion and politics, the Bender prize as one of GW’s top undergraduate teachers, and four honorary doctorates. He’s been named a Father of the Year by the Father’s Day Council and received the Public Service Sector Award from the Aspen Institute. Steve and Cokie have two children: Lee, a banker in Raleigh, NC, and Rebecca, a program specialist for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, and six grand-children. In his spare time, Roberts plays tennis and roots for his grand-children’s sports teams.