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Joseph Albright (journalist)

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Joseph Albright
Born
Joseph Medill Patterson Reeve

(1937-04-03) April 3, 1937 (age 87)
New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Alma materWilliams College
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • author
Spouses
​
​
(m. 1959; div. 1982)​
Marcia Kunstel
​
​
(m. 1983)​
Children3; including Alice
Relatives

Joseph Medill Patterson Albright (né Reeve; born April 3, 1937) is an American retired journalist and author. A descendant of the Medill-Patterson media family, Albright wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times before becoming a reporter and executive at Newsday. He was later Washington and foreign correspondent for Cox Newspapers, receiving several journalism awards and nominations. Albright has authored three books; two with his wife, fellow reporter Marcia Kunstel. He was formerly married to Madeleine Korbel Albright, who later became the first female U. S. Secretary of State.[1]

Early life

Albright was born Joseph Medill Patterson Reeve in New Orleans on April 3, 1937, to lawyer Jay Frederick "Fred" Reeve and his wife Josephine Medill Patterson, a reporter and airplane pilot.[2][3][4] His younger sister Alice became a screenwriter. His parents divorced in 1944, and in 1946 Josephine married the painter Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. Ivan Albright adopted Joseph and Alice, who took his surname, and with Josephine had two more children, Adam and Blandina ("Dina").[5] Josephine chronicled young Joseph in a weekly Newsday column, "Life with Junior".[6][7] He attended Groton School, Massachusetts, before studying at Williams College.[8]

Albright is a scion of a newspaper empire: his grandfather and namesake Joseph Medill Patterson founded the New York Daily News, and his grand-aunt Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson edited the Washington Times-Herald. His great-great-grandfather, Joseph Medill, owned the Chicago Tribune and served as mayor of Chicago. Albright's aunt Alicia Patterson was founder and publisher of Newsday, and without children of her own, gave special attention to Joseph and Alice,[4][7] expressing hope that one of them would succeed her as publisher when she retired.[9]

Career

Albright graduated from Williams College in 1958. During the summers of 1956 and 1957 he interned at the Denver Post, where he met fellow intern Madeleine Jana Korbel, whom he married on June 11, 1959. They had three daughters: twins Anne and Alice (born 1961) and Katie (born 1967), before divorcing in 1983.[1][10][11][a] He worked at the Chicago Sun-Times from 1958 to 1961 before joining Newsday in 1961. In 1963, after the death of his aunt Alicia, he became aide to the president and publisher, his uncle Harry F. Guggenheim.[12] He worked in New York and later became chief of the Washington, D.C. bureau.[13][14][15] He resigned from Newsday in early 1971,[16][17] and worked as a legislative aide to Maine Senator Edmund Muskie from 1971 to 1972.[3][18]

In 1972 he published a biography of vice president Spiro Agnew, What Makes Spiro Run. It was regarded as biased against Agnew,[19][20] and a review in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science wrote Albright "leans so heavily on superficial commercial appeal that the book should be of little interest to serious political observers."[20]

From 1972 to 1975 Albright was a correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle.[3] He became a correspondent for Cox Newspapers in 1976, and in 1983 married fellow Cox journalist Marcia Kunstel, with whom he reported from various foreign locales including South Africa, Afghanistan, Moscow, and Beijing.[21][22] He was a finalist for the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series on gas and oil policy on public lands.[23][24] He and his wife shared a 1988 Overseas Press Club award for foreign reporting for their feature "Stolen Childhood: A Global Report on the Exploitation of Children"[25] and a 1991 National Headliner Award from the Press Club of Atlantic City for their reporting on the leadup to the Gulf War.[26]

In 1990 Albright and Kunstel co-authored Their Promised Land, an overview of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as seen through the history of the Sorek Valley west of Jerusalem.[27][28] Publishers Weekly called it: "vivid, observant, achingly poignant",[29] and Kirkus Reviews called "a well-written and sweeping portrait of a troubled land."[30] Political analyst Kathleen Christison wrote: "Uncompromising readers on either side will resent its neutrality. But the book is honest in its choice of historical source material and its treatment of the facts of Jewish-Arab conflict."[28][31] A review in Newsweek noted that among the many books on the conflict, Kunstel's and Albright's "stands out for its thoughtfulness, its fairness and its excellent story."[32]

In 1997 Albright and Kunstel published Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy, focusing on American atomic spy Theodore Hall, and the married spy couple Morris and Lona Cohen.[33][34] They supplement their research with interviews conducted with Hall, his wife, and others.[35][36] Former CIA officer Frederick L. Wettering, reviewing for the International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, called it "a well-researched and very well-written biography of a heretofore little known spy."[34] Historian Gregg Herken noted it was the first book on Soviet atomic espionage to use archival sources from both Russia and the Venona project.[37] A film adaptation was optioned to Universal Pictures, with Leonardo DiCaprio tapped to portray Hall.[38][39]

Albright and Kunstel retired in 2000,[40] and since 2001 have owned Flat Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.[41] Albright has served as chairman of the Alicia Patterson Foundation,[3] vice-chairman of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance,[42] and from 2009 to 2021 was on the board of trustees of St. John's Health in Jackson Hole.[43][44] Kunstel has served on the governing council of The Wilderness Society since 2004.[41]

Bibliography

  • What Makes Spiro Run: The Life and Times of Spiro Agnew (1972)
  • Their Promised Land: Arab Versus Jew in History's Cauldron: One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills (1990). With Marcia Kunstel
  • Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (1997). With Marcia Kunstel[45]

Family tree

Notes

  1. ^ Joseph initiated a divorce and separation in January 1982, with the divorce finalized one year later.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b "Madeleine Albright, 1st female U.S. secretary of state, dies at 84". PBS NewsHour. March 23, 2022. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  2. ^ Lawrence Van Gelder (January 18, 1996). "Josephine Patterson Albright, Colorful Journalist, Dies at 82". The New York Times. Retrieved December 18, 2010. Josephine Patterson Albright, who flew the mail, shot tigers in India, covered Chicago crime in journalism's colorful "Front Page" era, ran an Illinois dairy and pig farm, bred horses in Wyoming, wrote a column about her family and helped establish a foundation for journalists, died on Monday at her home in Woodstock, Vt. She was 82. A daughter, Alice Arlen of Manhattan, said the death was caused by complications after a stroke.
  3. ^ a b c d Locher, Frances C., ed. (1981). Contemporary Authors. Vol. 97–100. Detroit: Gale Research. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-8103-1900-4.
  4. ^ a b Blackman, Ann (1999). Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright. Simon and Schuster. pp. 121–122. ISBN 978-0-684-86431-0.
  5. ^ McKinney, Megan (2011), The Magnificent Medills, New York, New York: HarperCollins, pp. 301–2, ISBN 978-0-06-178223-7
  6. ^ Dobbs 1999, p. 171.
  7. ^ a b Keeler 1990, p. 276.
  8. ^ Keeler 1990, p. 278.
  9. ^ Keeler 1990, p. 275.
  10. ^ a b Albright, Madeleine (2003). Madam Secretary. Miramax Books. p. 514. ISBN 978-0-7868-6843-8.
  11. ^ Dobbs 1999, pp. 166–167.
  12. ^ "Guggenheim Takes Role as Publisher". The Editor and Publisher. July 13, 1963. pp. 11+59.
  13. ^ Lippman, Thomas W. (2004). Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy. Boulder: Westview Press. pp. 10–12. ISBN 978-0-8133-4239-9.
  14. ^ Times, Steven V. Roberts Special to The New York (April 16, 1970). "Times Mirror to Get Control of Newsday". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  15. ^ "The Press: No Comment". Time. March 23, 1970. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  16. ^ Keeler 1990, p. 474.
  17. ^ "Joe Albright resigns from Newsday staff". Editor & Publisher. Vol. 104, no. 11. March 13, 1971.
  18. ^ Bloice, Carl (May 3, 1980). "Ed Muskie – the front man cometh". People's World. pp. 3+11.
  19. ^ Laut, Stephen J. (July 1, 1972). "Albright, Joseph. What Makes Spiro Run". Best Sellers: The Semi-Monthly Book Review. 32 (7). University of Scranton: 160–161.
  20. ^ a b Hannon, Philip J. (1972). "JOSEPH ALBRIGHT. What Makes Spiro Run: The Life and Times of Spiro Agnew. pp. xiii, 295. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1972. $6.95. LOWELL D. STREIKER and GERALD S. STROBER. Religion and the New Majority: Billy Graham, Middle America and the Politics of the 70s. pp. 202. New York: Association Press, 1972. $5.95". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 404 (1): 281–282. doi:10.1177/000271627240400150. ISSN 0002-7162.
  21. ^ O'Briant, Don (November 12, 1990). "Life and death in Holy Land focus of correspondents' book". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. p. D5 – via NewsBank.
  22. ^ Arnett, Peter (November 1998). "Goodbye, World". American Journalism Review. p. 50 – via Gale OneFile.
  23. ^ "Pulitzer Prize board, for first time, names finalists in all categories". The Boston Globe. April 16, 1980 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. ^ "Finalist: Joseph P. Albright of Cox Newspapers". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  25. ^ "Overseas Press Club Awards 16 Prizes". The New York Times. April 20, 1988. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  26. ^ Bennett, Tom (March 28, 1991). "The Gulf Crisis – Journal-Constitution gulf reporters honored". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. p. A10 – via NewsBank.
  27. ^ Weissman, Paul (January 20, 1991). "In Short: Nonfiction". The New York Times.
  28. ^ a b Christison, Kathleen (December 10, 1990). "Valley in the Promised Land". Washington Post.
  29. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: Their Promised Land by Joseph Albright, Author, Marcia Kunstel, With Crown Publishers $19.95 (0p) ISBN 978-0-517-57231-3". PublishersWeekly.com. October 1990. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  30. ^ "Their Promised Land: Arab and Jew in History's Cauldron--One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills". Kirkus Reviews. October 15, 1990. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  31. ^ Christison, Kathleen (July 1, 1992). "Macro Microcosm". Journal of Palestine Studies. 21 (4): 98–100. doi:10.2307/2537668. JSTOR 2537668.
  32. ^ "A Guide To The Gulf". Newsweek. February 17, 1991.
  33. ^ Weinstein, Allen (September 28, 1997). "Bombshell: The Secret Story of Ted Hall and America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy. By Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel . Times Books: 400 pp., $25". Los Angeles Times.
  34. ^ a b Wettering, Frederick L. (December 1998). "Still lingering in the Shadows". International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence. 11 (4): 488–494. doi:10.1080/08850609808435389.
  35. ^ Badash, Lawrence (September 1998). "Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy". Physics Today. 51 (9): 61–62. Bibcode:1998PhT....51i..61A. doi:10.1063/1.882450. ISSN 0031-9228.
  36. ^ Holloway, David (May 1998). "A Mole Brought to Light". Science. 280 (5364): 691–692. doi:10.1126/science.280.5364.691a. ISSN 0036-8075. S2CID 98371046.
  37. ^ Herken, Gregg (October 19, 1997). "Traitors in our Midst". Washington Post.
  38. ^ Petrikin, Chris (June 10, 1998). "DiCaprio eyeing 'Bombshell'". Variety. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  39. ^ "DiCaprio inks 'Bombshell'". Variety. September 16, 1997. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
  40. ^ Albright, Joe; Kunstel, Marcia. "What is PRINT?". tworeporters.com. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  41. ^ a b "Our Governing Council". www.wilderness.org. The Wilderness Society. Retrieved March 25, 2022.
  42. ^ Albright, Joe; Kunstel, Marcia (May 2001). Safety Risks and Environmental Perils of Scenic Helicopter Tours in Teton County, Wyoming (PDF) (Report). Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. p. 56.
  43. ^ Robinson-Johnson, Evan (November 9, 2021). "After 12 years, Joe Albright resigns from St. John's Health board". Jackson Hole News&Guide.
  44. ^ Robinson-Johnson, Evan (November 10, 2021). "Trustee Albright resigns from St. John's Health board to help county fight COVID-19". Jackson Hole News&Guide.
  45. ^ Badash, Lawrence (1998). "Review of Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel". Physics Today. 51 (9): 61–62. Bibcode:1998PhT....51i..61A. doi:10.1063/1.882450.

Sources

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