Since 1991, Newsweek Senior Editor Jonathan Alter has written the widely acclaimed "Between The Lines" column, which examines politics, media and society at large. Alter is also an originator and author of the weekly "Conventional Wisdom Watch," which uses up, down and sideways arrows to measure and lampoon the news.

Alter has covered the past four presidential campaigns for Newsweek and has frequently interviewed President Clinton and other world leaders. In recent years, he has written extensively about the crisis of America's at-risk children.

Since 1996, Alter has also been a contributing correspondent for NBC News, where he appears regularly on all NBC broadcasts including "Today," "NBC Nightly News," NBC News specials and MSNBC. In spring 1997 Alter was the Ferris Visiting Professor of Press and Politics at Princeton University.

Alter has earned many awards, including the 1994 Clarion Award for Best Magazine Opinion Column, and the 1993 National Headliner Award for Consistently Outstanding Feature Column. In 1995, Alter was selected as one of the nation's most influential media critics in a survey of leading media executives and scholars. His awards for media criticism include the 1987 Lowell Mellett Award and two New York State Bar Association Media Awards. He also won the 1987 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting, and a Mentoring USA Award for encouraging mentoring.

Alter joined Newsweek as an associate editor in the Nation section in March 1983, becoming media critic the following year. He was named a senior writer in February 1987 and a senior editor in September 1991. For two years prior to joining Newsweek, Alter was an editor of The Washington Monthly. His work has also appeared in such publications as The New Republic, Esquire, Slate, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.

A Chicago native, Alter received his B.A. in history with honors from Harvard in 1979. He is coauthor of "Selecting a President" (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux) and the coeditor of "Inside the System" (Prentice Hall).