Lynn Povich is an award-winning journalist who has spent more than forty years in the news business. She began her career at Newsweek as a secretary. In 1970, she was one of forty-six women who sued Newsweek for sex discrimination. Five years later, Povich was appointed the first woman senior editor in the magazine’s history. Povich left Newsweek in 1991 to become editor-in-chief of Working Woman magazine, the only national business magazine for women. She joined MSNBC.com in 1996 to help launch the twenty-four-hour news and information cable/Internet venture, overseeing the web content of NBC News as well as MSNBC cable.

Povich has received numerous honors, including a 1976 Matrix Award from Women in Communications for Exceptional Achievement in Magazines. In 2005, she edited a book on her father, famed Washington Post sports columnist Shirley Povich, called All Those Mornings . . . At the Post. A native of Washington, D.C., Povich graduated from Vassar College, where she was executive-in-residence in 1996. She serves on the advisory boards of the International Women’s Media Foundation and the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. She is married to Stephen B. Shepard, former editor-in-chief of Business Week and founding dean of the Graduate School of Journalism of the City University of New York. They have two children.

PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

 

I. F. STONE, proprietor of I. F. Stone’s Weekly, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published The Trial of Socrates, which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

 

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of The Washington Post. It was Ben who gave the Post the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

 

ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation’s premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by The Washington Post as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

Peter Osnos, Founder and Editor-at-Large