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Jeffrey Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg - Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, Goldberg also writes the magazine's advice column.
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Before joining The Atlantic in 2007, Goldberg was a Middle East correspondent, and the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. Previously, he served as a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine and New York magazine. He has also written for the Jewish Daily Forward, and was a columnist for The Jerusalem Post.

His book Prisoners was hailed as one of the best books of 2006 by the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The Progressive, Washingtonian magazine, and Playboy. Goldberg rthe recipient of the 2003 National Magazine Award for Reporting for his coverage of Islamic terrorism. He is also the winner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists prize for best international investigative journalist; the Overseas Press Club award for best human-rights reporting; and the Abraham Cahan Prize in Journalism. He is also the recipient of 2005's Anti-Defamation League Daniel Pearl Prize.

In 2001, Goldberg was appointed the Syrkin Fellow in Letters of the Jerusalem Foundation, and in 2002 he became a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.
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The Potato Eaters

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Nov 8 1998, 3:30 AM ET Comment

Because I am a highly trained TV writer and have sources throughout Hollywood, I can now bring you, verbatim, the pitch meeting in which the now-canceled Fox Network sitcom Costello was first proposed--

Fox Executive No. 1: OK, give us the high concept.

Writer: Right, Costello is Good Will Hunting meets, well, Good Will Hunting, but with a chick instead of Matt Damon.

Fox Executive No. 2: All right, but what's the concept, what's the theme?

Writer: Oh, right. The theme is, Irish people are retards.

Fox Executive No. 2: [thoughtfully] Yeah, I can work with that, but there's got to be something more ...

Writer: OK, how about this: Irish people are loud retards.

Fox Executive No. 1: That sounds like a winner to me!

Writer: One more thing: We'll call the father Spud. Get it, like potato?
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