Walter Isaacson discussing Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
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Followed by a conversation between Isaacson and Bruce Kuklick, Jeannette P. and Roy F. Nichols Professor of History
September 9, 2003, 5 p.m.
Zellerbach Theatre, 3680 Walnut Street, Philadelphia,
PA 19104
Open to the public
Co-sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Fox Forum,
and the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Consortium.
Walter Isaacson is the president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit educational and public policy forum based in Washington, DC, and Aspen, Colorado. The institute runs leadership programs around the world, holds seminars and sponsors policy studies on a variety of global issues. He assumed the job in April 2003.
His career spans more than 25 years of journalism in which he’s worked in a variety of roles including newspaper reporter, magazine editor, author and television executive. He began as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London and then as a reporter and city hall columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune/States-Item.
He joined Time in 1978 as a national affairs writer in New York and moved to Washington as a political correspondent covering the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy. He returned to New York and became the magazine’s Nation editor and then assistant managing editor. In 1993, he became Time Warner’s Editor of New Media. In that capacity, he helped develop the company’s interactive television, cable and online services.
He became the managing editor of Time in 1996, the 14th top editor of that publication. As editor, he oversaw a number of special projects including the Time 100, an end-of-the-century project involving six special issues and television shows, which culminated with a choice of a Person of the Century. He also expanded Time’s growing franchises, which include a classroom publication called Time For Kids; a technology publication called On Magazine; and an online site Time.com. As editor he also continued to write for the magazine. His work has included cover stories on Bill Gates, Andrew Grove, and Madeleine Albright, as well as an essay on Albert Einstein, Time’s choice for Person of the Century. AdWeek magazine named him Editor of the Year in 1995.
In 2001 he became editorial director of Time Inc. and then the chairman and CEO of CNN. There he had overall responsibility for leading CNN/U.S., CNN Headline News, CNN International, CNNfin (financial network), CNN Airport Network, CNNRadio, CNNRadio Noticias, CNN en Español, three out-of-home, place-based networks, 12 Web sites and CNN Newsource, the world’s most extensively syndicated news service.
He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (Simon & Schuster, 2003), Kissinger: A Biography (Simon & Schuster, 1992) and the co-author of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (Simon & Schuster, 1986), a book about American statesmen and the Cold War.
Born in New Orleans, La., on May 20, 1952, he is a graduate of Harvard College and of Pembroke College of Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He lives with his wife and daughter in Washington, DC, and in Aspen Colorado.