Virginia Heffernan
Virginia Heffernan (born August 8, 1969) is an American journalist. In February, 2012, she became a national correspondent for Yahoo! News. Before that, she wrote regularly about digital and pop culture for the Opinion pages of The New York Times. She is also known as a television critic for The New York Times, and as "The Medium" columnist at The New York Times Magazine.
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[edit] Background and education
Virginia Heffernan was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. She received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1991, and an English Literature Master's Degree and Ph.D from Harvard University, in 1993 and 2002, respectively.[1]
[edit] Career
[edit] Journalism
Heffernan began her career as a fact-checker with The New Yorker magazine.[2] She served as an editor at Harper's and Talk magazines,[3] and as TV critic for the online magazine Slate. Reviewing her work there, online critic Teresa DiFalco called Heffernan a "dazzling talent ... Should you at some point get stranded on a Desert Island, make Heffernan your first stop back. [TV] is life, it is increasingly how we communicate with each other, and a quick read of Heffernan will leave you fully prepared for the most daunting cocktail party crowd."[4]
In June 2002, the Columbia Journalism Review named Heffernan one of its "Ten Young Editors to Watch."[5] In September of the following year, Heffernan departed Slate to join The New York Times. At the time, media critic Jim Romenesko published an internal email from Slate publisher Cyrus Krohn that complained, "A prominent East Coast newspaper, The New York Times, has been poaching from Slate, taking key writers and editors invaluable to our evolving franchise."[6]
[edit] Books and TV
In 2005, Heffernan (with co-writer Mike Albo) published the comic novel, The Underminer. The MTV documentary on the murder of Matthew Shepherd, Matthew's Murder—for which Heffernan wrote the script—was nominated for an Emmy award.[7]
[edit] Personal
Heffernan lives in Brooklyn Heights with her two children, Ben and Susannah.
[edit] References
- ^ "Fannie and Alan Leslie Center for the Humanies at Dartmouth College". Dartmouth.edu. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~lhc/events/2007/heffernan.html. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
- ^ Skurnick, Lizzie (2003-04-01). "So What Do You Do, Virginia Heffernan?". Media Bistro. http://www.mediabistro.com/articles/cache/a57.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
- ^ Heffernan, Virginia (2009-05-21). "New York Times Magazine: "About Virginia"". Themedium.blogs.nytimes.com. http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/. Retrieved 2010-11-09.
- ^ Teresa DiFalco, "Virginia Heffernan, TV Muse," Contemporary Women Writers, August 9, 2002.
- ^ Cox, Ana Marie (2002-06-01). "Ten Young Editors To Watch". Columbia Journalism Review. http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2002/6/picks-cox.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
- ^ Romenesko, James (2003-09-05). "Slate Publisher's Memo re Losing Staff to NYT". Poynter Online. http://www.poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=5589. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
- ^ Hooper, Joseph (2000-05-14). "It's Not All Dazzle: MTV Has a Conscience, Too". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7D91138F937A25756C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2. Retrieved 2008-04-16.
