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Peter Osnos

Peter Osnos

Peter Osnos is a journalist turned book editor/publisher. He spent 18 years working at various bureaus for The Washington Post before founding Public Affairs Books. More

Peter Osnos is founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs books and a media fellow at The Century Foundation which distributes this weekly "Platform" column. (An archive of the columns is available at www.tcf.org.) He is vice-chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review and executive director of The Caravan Project, which is also based at The Century Foundation.

Osnos spent 18 years at the Washington Post, where he was variously Indochina bureau chief, Moscow correspondent, foreign editor, national editor and London bureau chief.

He was publisher of Random House's Times Books Division from 1991 to 1996, and was also vice president and associate publisher of the Random House imprint. Authors he has worked with include President Bill Clinton, former President Jimmy Carter, Rosalyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, Barack Obama, Boris Yeltsin, Paul Volcker, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Clark Clifford, Sam Donaldson, Morley Safer, Peggy Noonan, Molly Ivins, Stanley Karnow, Jim Lehrer, Muhammad Yunus, Scott McClellan, Robert McNamara, Natan Sharansky, and journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Atlantic and the Economist.

He served as chair of the Trade Division of the Association of American Publishers Committee, and is an emeritus member of the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch. He serves on the board of other journalism and human rights organizations and is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations.
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Challenging Putin's Faux Democracy

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As demonstrated on the streets of Moscow, the Russian middle class has found its voice against the cyclical rule of Putin and Medevev. But will they be heard?… More »

A Tumultuous Year in Books

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Borders fell and Kindle soared as more and more people adopted e-readers… More »

The Phenomenal 'New York Review of Books'

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For nearly 50 years, the magazine has led the discourse in the publishing world… More »

Library Wars: Amazon and Publishers Vie for Control of E-Book Rentals

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The widespread downloading of e-books unnerves publishers because digital files can be easily shared and proliferated… More »

The Longevity of Satire: Celebrating 'Private Eye' at 50

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Britain's satirical mainstay still steers the country's cultural dialogue… More »

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Forty-four years after its launch, the weekly broadcast is still the dominant news magazine on television… More »

Enhanced E-books and the Future of Publishing

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Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Future of Journalism

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The Power of a Book Bargain

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The e-book marketplace is redefining what people expect to pay for books… More »

The Legacy of Jim Romenesko, Media Pioneer

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This Summer's Digital Inventory: Using New Tech for Entertainment

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While the range increases and the quality of gadgetry improves every year, ultimately, we all have habits that are pretty well entrenched… More »

Are There Too Many Books?

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Traditional publishing is experiencing an upswing, but that doesn't mean the quality of print is increasing as well… More »

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