ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Zoglin is a senior editor at TIME, as well as TIME’s theater critic. He also writes on a variety of cultural topics.

Previously, Zoglin oversaw the magazine’s Notebook section and, before that, the Arts & Media, Society and Lifestyle section. He also helped edit TIME’s coverage of the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, focusing especially on the investigation into the terror plot. 

Zoglin joined TIME as a staff writer in 1983, and for more than a decade he was the magazine’s TV critic. In that job, he reviewed hundreds of TV shows, covered major media mergers, examined media coverage of such news events as the first Gulf War, and wrote cover stories on David Letterman, Bill Cosby, Diane Sawyer, Star Trek and Vice President Quayle’s campaign against Murphy Brown, among others. 

Zoglin began his journalism career in San Francisco in 1972 as a copy editor for Saturday Review magazine. From 1973 to 1978 he was a New York-based editor and writer, contributing articles about television to the New York Times Sunday Arts & Media section, The New Republic, Village Voice and other publications.

In 1978 Zoglin moved to Atlanta to become television critic for the Atlanta Constitution, where he spent four years covering Ted Turner’s TV empire and the start-up of CNN, among many other stories. He left Atlanta in 1982 to help launch Time Inc.’s television magazine, TV-Cable Week.

Zoglin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley with a B. A. in English and an M.S. in journalism. He is a native of Kansas City, Mo., and currently lives in New York City with his wife, Charla Krupp, a magazine editor, Today show contributor and author of the book How Not To Look Old.