Executive Director, Blueprint
310-341-5825
jnewton100@ucla.edu

Jim Newton is a veteran journalist, author and teacher. In 25 years at the Los Angeles Times, Newton worked as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, columnist and, from 2007 through 2010, editor of the editorial pages. He is the recipient of numerous national and local awards in journalism and participated in two staff efforts, coverage of the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Before coming to The Times, he was a reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he began his career as the 1985-86 clerk to New York Times columnist James Reston. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College.

He came to UCLA full-time in early 2015 to teach in Communication Studies and Public Policy and to found Blueprint, a new UCLA magazine addressing the policy challenges facing California and Los Angeles in particular. He serves as the magazine’s editor-in-chief.

Newton also is a respected author of four important works of history. Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, was a critically acclaimed best-selling biography of the former chief justice and California governor, published in 2006 and described as “the definitive biography of Earl Warren for this generation.”

His second was entitled Eisenhower: The White House Years. Publishers Weekly called it “clear, brisk, and insightful, a timely study of a master of consensus politics with lessons for today’s polarized Washington.” Book List described it as “a well-done presentation that helps correct enduring perceptions about an effective but misunderstood presidency.” And Bob Woodward, the Washington Post’s great investigative reporter and author, called Eisenhower “a truly great book.”

Newton’s third book, released in 2014, was a collaboration with Leon Panetta, former CIA director and secretary of defense (among other things). Entitled Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, Panetta’s autobiography, written with Newton’s help, was widely praised – the Washington Post described it as an example of “this genre at its best” – and much-debated. It, too, was a New York Times best-seller and one of the most talked about books of the year.

In 2020, he released Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, journalist and author David Shribman described it as “a thoughtful look at the governor who shaped the state that has always reached the American future before the rest of the country. It is the play of this man of the mind against the experience of a veteran newsman that makes this volume a formidable contribution to the history of both the state and the country.”