Alabama Booksmith

Howell Raines, born in Birmingham, Alabama, is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and former executive editor of The New York Times.

After receiving his B.A. from Birmingham-Southern College in 1964 he began his journalistic career with The Birmingham Post-Herald. He then worked for The Tuscaloosa News and WBRC-TV in Birmingham, and eventually became political editor for The Atlanta Constitution, which he joined in 1971 after working for a year as a reporter at The Birmingham News. From 1976 until 1978 Mr. Raines worked as political editor at The St. Petersburg Times, whereupon he joined The New York Times as a national correspondent. He was Atlanta bureau chief for the Times from 1979 until 1981, a White House correspondent from 1981 until 1984, national political correspondent in 1984, and from 1985 until 1987 he served as deputy Washington editor. In 1987 he was bureau chief in London, and then returned to the United States in 1988 to become Washington bureau chief, a post he held until 1993, when he was selected to serve as editorial page editor for The Times. In 2001 Howell Raines was appointed executive editor of The New York Times, a position he held until his resignation in 2003.

Howell Raines won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for "Grady's Gift", a feature he wrote for The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of four books, The One That Got Away, Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis, My Soul is Rested, an oral history of the civil rights movement, and a novel, Whiskey Man.