Jed Horne

Jed Horneis a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who was for many years city editor ofThe Times-Picayune,theNew Orleansdaily newspaper.

He is the author of two books:Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City(Random House, 2006, updated 2008), which chronicledHurricane Katrinaand the city's gradual recovery, andDesire Street:A True Story of Death and Deliverance in New Orleans(Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2005), the story of a Louisianadeath rowcase. Horne was named a senior consultant to President Obama's bipartisanNational Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drillingfollowing the 2010 blowout of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2013 he made a documentary about the Fukushima tsunami and reactor disaster, that was broadcast on Japan's public television network, NHK. He has been interviewed by numerous radio and television personalities, includingTerry Gross,Amy Goodman,Charlie Rose,andTavis Smiley.With initial funding fromGeorge Soros,he helped founders Ariella Cohen and Karen Gadbois launchThe Lens,an investigative website focused on New Orleans governance.

Early life and education

The son of a school administrator and the great-nephew of Nobel laureate Dickinson Richards (medicine, 1956), Horne was born inGreenfield, Massachusettsin 1948. He is a graduate of Deerfield Academy andHarvard College,class of 1970.

Career

He began his career in the early 1970s working with "alternative" weeklies, theBoston Phoenixand The Real Paper. In 1973 he moved toNew York Cityand was employed byTime Inc.in magazine development. He was a founding editor of People Weekly and was involved in the revival of Life magazine as a monthly. After leaving Time Inc. he was a founding editor of Quest magazine. He moved to New Orleans in 1988 after a period of living and writing in the mid-Hudson Valley.

Awards and honors

"Desire Street" was nominated for the 2006 Edgar for best non-fiction crime book of the year and was runner-up for the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. "Breach of Faith" was declared "the best of the Katrina books," on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Horne was part of the Times-Picayune team awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. His articles have appeared in an array of publications, including The Village Voice, The Guardian, the New Republic and Vanity Fair.

Personal

Horne and his wife, Jane Deering Wholey, a community organizer and founder of the youth organization Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, are the parents of two sons, Jedidiah Huntington Horne and Elias Hudson Horne. Horne and Wholey currently divide their time between New Orleans andPátzcuaro,a mountain town in theMexicanstate ofMichoacán.