Doug Henwood

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Doug Henwood
Born December 7, 1952 (1952-12-07) (age 59)
Teaneck, New Jersey, USA
Education Yale University
University of Virginia
Occupation Writer
Spouse Liza Featherstone

Doug Henwood (born December 7, 1952) is an American journalist who writes frequently about economic affairs. He publishes a newsletter, Left Business Observer, that analyzes economics and politics from a left-wing perspective, and is a contributing editor at The Nation.

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[edit] Early years

Henwood was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, and grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. He received a B.A. in English from Yale University in 1975. Late in high school and while at Yale, Henwood identified as a conservative, briefly joining the Party of the Right, which Henwood wrote about in an article in The Nation entitled "Partying on the Right":

Sometime late in high school, I fell under the spell of Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley, and about the first thing I did when I got to college was join the Party of the Right (POR).

From 1976-9, Henwood did graduate work in English at the University of Virginia, concentrating on British and American poetry and critical theory but left before obtaining his doctorate. He then worked for two years as a copywriter and assistant to a medical publisher in New York.

[edit] Writing

In September 1986, Henwood launched Left Business Observer.[1] Topics to which he has devoted coverage include:

  • Income distribution and poverty in the U.S. and elsewhere in the First World
  • the globalization of finance and production
  • the worldwide attack on pensions
  • Third World debt and development
  • the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
  • the media business
  • the influence of foundations on politics and culture
  • what it means to be a leftist in a world that seems to have forgotten what that means

Henwood has written three books. His first, The State of the USA Atlas (1994), is a social atlas of the U.S. in the Pluto atlas series. This was followed in 1997 by Wall Street (Verso Books), in which Henwood described the workings of high finance. His most recent work is After the New Economy (New Press, 2003), an analysis of the 1990s boom and bust.

His writing has also appeared in The Nation, Grand Street, Village Voice, Newsday, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian (UK).

[edit] Radio

Henwood began hosting Behind the News in 1996, a weekly radio show and podcast produced at KPFA and, formerly, WBAI. The show features interviews with activists, intellectuals and academics, preceded by a summary of recent economic headlines.[2] Notable former guests include Noam Chomsky, James K. Galbraith, Christopher Hitchens, Lewis Lapham, George McGovern, Joseph Stiglitz, Gore Vidal, and Slavoj Žižek.[3]

On November 11, 2010, Henwood announced that he would be retiring Behind the News in its current form, instead broadcasting from another venue as well as on his website. This change arose from an interim producer's decision to reschedule Henwood's show to Saturdays and reduce its airtime to twice a month despite Henwood's having raised substantial funds during the network's previous fund drive, conditions that the host found unacceptable.[4]

[edit] Family

He is married to journalist Liza Featherstone. They live in Brooklyn with their young son.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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