James F. Hoge's career exemplifies both journalistic success and a savvy understanding of international affairs. Currently the editor of
magazine, Hoge spent more than three decades in daily journalism, covering national and international news and political events all over the world. During the 1960s, he covered Congress and the White House for
, where he went on to serve as editor from 1968 to 1976. Under his leadership,
garnered six Pulitzer prizes for journalistic excellence. In 1984, Hoge moved to New York as president and publisher of
Hoge got his first close-up view of American foreign policy in 1962 as a Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association. Later, during his years in Chicago, he was chairman of the Adlai E. Stevenson Institute of International Affairs, Vice-Chairman of the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, a director of the U.S./South African Leadership Exchange Program, and a member of the Japan/U.S. Friendship Commission.
At the lecture podium, Hoge translates his three decades of experience into enlightening and insightful presentations on the strategic challenges facing the U.S, global economics, major trends in U.S. politics and the role of the media in the modern world.
James F(ulton) Hoge, Jr.
1935-
James F. Hoge, Jr., is a newspaper and magazine publisher who started out as a reporter in Washington, D.C. Shortly into his writing career, Hoge realized that his natural talents were best suited to editing. Before he was thirty years old, Hoge was invited to Chicago to help edit the
Chicago Sun-Times.
As youth began to dominate popular culture in the 1960s, Hoge, one of the youngest newspaper editors around, found that he was a hot commodity. Indeed, Hoge believed he was the best person for the job of managing editor at the
Chicago Sun-Times, and in April of 1967 he landed that job. A year and a half later he was promoted to editor-in-chief.
When the Democratic Party held its bloody convention in 1968, the
Sun-Times, with Hoge at the helm, led the national print coverage of the event. Hoge established the
Sun-Times as a nourishing environment for good writers: Tom Fitzpatrick, who won a Pulitzer Prize, and well-known film reviewer Roger Ebert are just two of the many respected journalists who blossomed under Hoge's watch.
In 1976 Marshall Field asked Hoge to edit the ailing
Chicago Daily News, a newspaper owned by the Field family. Hoge gave the newspaper some new sections and added a magazine supplement, but the changes did not reverse the paper's fortunes, and the
Daily News went under in 1978. Bringing select
Daily News talent with him, Hoge returned to devoting himself full-time to the
Sun-Times. Hoge proceeded to revamp the
Sun-Times, giving it new features and increasing its coverage of international affairs.
While he was Chicago's hottest newspaper editor, Hoge's lofty status did not protect him from criticism, a fate that is almost invariably met by any newspaper editor. Hoge's managerial style at the
Sun-Times and
Daily News was the topic of most of the criticism; he was described by some staffers as being distant, demanding, and unfeeling. At the same time, Hoge gained a reputation for supporting his reporters when they are challenged. Journalist Roger Simon gave Hoge two of the best compliments a newspaper editor can receive when he said that Hoge has the ability to communicate excitement over a story, and that he "makes you want to do your best for him." In the winter of 1984 Hoge left the
Chicago Sun-Times for a stint at the
New York Daily News. The
Daily News, said Hoge in a
New York magazine interview, "has a great tradition of capturing the flavor of New York in a readable, interesting way." After his work at the
Daily News, Hoge moved on to edit the journal
Foreign Affairs. As a newspaper editor in Chicago, Hoge had pushed his bosses for increased coverage of international events and issues, so the move to
Foreign Affairs seemed to be a natural progression for Hoge.
In 1997 Hoge and
Foreign Affairs managing editor Fareed Zakaria edited a book titled
The American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World. Issued as a celebration of the journal's seventy-fifth birthday, the volume consists of forty-three different chronologically ordered articles and essays written by various players in the sphere of international affairs. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, diplomat and historian George Kennan, English historian Arnold Toynbee, anthropologist Margaret Mead, freelance intellectual William F. Buckley, and Marxist Karl Kautsky are just a few of the contributors. Hoge and Zakaria proudly display much of
Foreign Affairs' most prophetic material, such as Kautsky's condemnation of the post-World War I Versailles treaty for "bringing again to life the ideas of armed opposition and revenge," as noted by a
Publishers Weekly reviewer.
Contemporary Authors Online – 2004
1935 - (85 years)
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