Barry Sussman

BARRY SUSSMAN

Barry Sussman is the editor of www.niemanwatchdog.org, a Web site of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University whose aim is to encourage more and better watchdog reporting.

Previously, Mr. Sussman was a Washington Post editor for 22 years, holding the positions of city editor, special Watergate editor, special projects editor/national, pollster and public opinion analyst and columnist for the Washington Post National Weekly Edition. He also was managing editor/national of United Press International. His first newspaper job, in the 1960s, was as a beginning reporter at the Bristol, VA-TN Herald Courier, a 25,000-circulation daily at the time. After 17 months he was named managing editor.

He is the author of three books. The first, "The Great Coverup: Nixon and the Scandal of Watergate," was named one of the best books of the year in 1974 by the New York Times; ten years after its publication John Dean called it "the best book on Watergate." His other books are "What Americans Really Think," published in 1987 and dealing in the main with public opinion and politics; and "Maverick, A Life in Politics," written with Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., and published in 1995.

Mr. Sussman has worked as an international news media consultant with the Innovation International media consulting group, with assignments at newspapers in Spain, Portugal and in seven Latin American countries. From 1999 through 2004 he was co-editor of "Innovations in Newspapers," an annual report on the news media, worldwide, done for the World Association of Newspapers.