Richard Miniter

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Richard Miniter (born 1967), was the editorial page editor and Vice President of Opinion at The Washington Times from March until October 2009.^[1] He is also the author of two New York Times best selling books, Losing bin Laden and Shadow War. He is a former editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.

He has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, National Review and Reader's Digest, among others publications. In addition, his articles have appeared in newspapers throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Media appearances 2.2 Public speaking 2.3 Author 3 Personal 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early life

The eldest child of Richard F. and Susan C. Miniter, Richard T. Miniter was born in New York City and grew up in Rosendale, New York. He graduated from Vassar College with a degree in philosophy in 1990. His thesis was on the German classical liberal Wilhelm von Humboldt's The Limits of State Action, the work that inspired John Stuart Mill to write On Liberty.

After graduating from Vassar College in 1990, Miniter worked for the American Spectator, became a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and was a senior writer at Insight on the News, a national weekly magazine published by The Washington Times.

[edit] Career

From 1996 to 2000, Miniter reported for newspapers and magazines from Western Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia. He traveled with rebels into war zones in Uganda, Sudan and Burma and along smugglers' routes in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia.

Hired by Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley in 2000, Miniter was sent to Brussels as an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal Europe and editor of its weekly "Business Europe" column.^[2] He also wrote a weekly column, "The Visible Hand", for The Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.^[3]

While at the Journal, Random House published Miniter's first book, The Myth of Market Share. The book argues that market share does not tend to generate above average profits. Executives should not pursue mergers based on size alone and regulators should not bother to stop them.

Shortly after the September 11 attacks, Miniter left the Journal and joined the investigative reporting team of the Sunday Times, Britain's largest "quality" paper.

Miniter joined the Washington Times as editorial page editor and vice president of opinion in March 2009, but as of November 2009 had not been seen in the office since July. His lawyer reported that Miniter was in salary negotiations with the Times.^[4] Minited was terminated in October, prior to a shake-up at the Times, in which three top executives were ousted and another resigned without public explanation. Miniter has since filed a discrimination complaint against the paper with the EEOC, saying he was "coerced" into attending a Unification Church religious ceremony that culminated in a mass wedding conducted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the newspaper's founder. In an interview, Miniter said that he "was made to feel there was no choice" but to attend the ceremony if he wanted to keep his job, and that executives "gave me examples of people whose careers at the Times had grown after they converted" to the Unification Church. Miniter, an Episcopalian who tried to avoid attending by saying he had to worship at his own church, said he found the religious weekend in New York last December to be "creepy".^[5]

[edit] Media appearances

Miniter appears regularly on television and radio to discuss al Qaeda and global terrorism. He has appeared on every major American cable news network including CNN, CNBC, C-Span, Fox News, and MSNBC—nearly 200 times in the past three years. He has been featured on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity & Colmes, Kudlow and Company and Special Report with Brit Hume, among others.

He has been a featured guest on more 1000 talk radio shows, including almost every top ten program. He has appeared on overseas television networks including ABC (Australia), Al Jazeera (Qatar), CBC (Canada), ITV and Sky News (U.K), LBC (Lebanon), and RAI (Italy), and radio programs in Australia, Belgium, France, Ireland, and Italy.

[edit] Public speaking

Miniter has given speeches across America, Europe and Asia, addressing audiences of executives, students, judges, lawyers and government officials.

[edit] Author

In early 2002, Miniter was contracted to write a book that became Losing bin Laden. He would spend the next 18 months reporting from Khartoum, Cairo, Frankfurt, Hamburg, London, Paris and Washington to offer an account of the bin Laden menace during the Clinton years. It became a New York Times bestseller, peaking at no. 10 in September 2003.^[6] Losing bin Laden was cited on NBC's Meet the Press by host Tim Russert.^[7]

Miniter's next book was drawn from on the ground reporting in Iraq, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines. Shadow War: The Untold Story of How America is Winning the War on Terror became his second New York Times bestseller, debuting at no.7.^[8]

Miniter's latest book is entitled Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror. In 2006, he edited Ayaan Hirsi Ali's bestselling book Infidel in Paris, France. He is currently writing a book for Simon & Schuster entitled "Some Gave All."

In 2007 Miniter and five other conservative authors sued Eagle Publishing, claiming that it had sold their books at a discount to book clubs owned by the same parent company, thus depriving them of royalties. The judge ruled that the case was invalid because the authors had contracts with Regnery, a subsidiary of Eagle, which contained binding arbitration clauses.^[9][10] Miniter and the other authors pursued the case in arbitration.^[11] In a different arbitration case in 2008, Miniter was ordered to repay a $150,000 advance to Regnery Publishing when he did not deliver the second of a 2 book deal with the publisher. Miniter stated that Regnery had not allowed him draft a new project, after the initial plan fell apart, and reported that he intended to appeal.^[11]

[edit] Personal

Miniter is the older brother of Brendan Miniter, the Wall Street Journal's Assistant Editor of OpinionJournal.com, and Frank Miniter, who is the executive editor of the NRA's American Hunter magazine and author of the book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting.^[12] Miniter's father, Richard F. Miniter, published The Things I Want Most, a book^[13] about their family adopting a disadvantaged child, which was released in 1997.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• "Richard Miniter's official website"
• "Miniter's Blog on Pajamas Media"
• "Miniter Interview on C-Span's Q & A"