Evolution of a Columnist

About the Book

The book chronicles the intellectual journey of Ed Flattau, the only nationally syndicated environmental columnist writing on a continuous basis for American newspapers since the early 1970s’. Through a chronological compilation of writings dealing with issues, people, places, and events, the book charts the course of his thinking and how it shaped his career. This includes personal reflections on journalism, politics, and the environment that take the reader from the author’s formative stage in the 1960s’ to the present day.

The book describes how a prize-winning columnist deals with the inevitable contradictions and challenges of his subject matter, and conveys a sense of the steady growth of the environmental movement’s national influence since the 1970 celebration of the first Earth Day.

Flattau’s twice-a-week environmental column has appeared in as many as 120 daily newspapers at various times during the past three decades. He has won ten national journalism awards, reported from five different continents, and shined a spotlight on the key environmental issues and the movement’s principle players. In addition to being published in the nation’s leading newspapers and periodicals, many of Flattau’s writings have been far ahead of their time. Perhaps one of the book’s most striking revelations is that we continue to make many of the same correctable environmental mistakes of 30 years ago.

“Evolution of a Columnist” is a unique sort of journalistic memoir. Few if any columnists have gone about telling their stories directly through the development of their thought processes. As an added inducement, the book contains refutations of the right-wing polemical tracts and talk-show claims that have recently flooded the marketplace; and while many journalists have given President George W. Bush a free pass, Flattau is not one of them.

The book should appeal to academic and general audiences interested in what it takes to be a columnist. The progression of environmental history as witnessed through the eyes of a journalist with a front row seat should also draw readers. Flattau’s book consists of approximately 90,000 words.

From “Environment Writer” Newsletter February 2004: Syndicated Columnist Ed Flattau Recants 40-Year ´Intellectual Journey´ Environmental columnist Edward Flattau was, so to speak, there at the beginning. Not quite at the signing of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and 1970 passage of the landmark Clean Air Act ... but certainly pretty soon thereafter. Early enough to catch the bulk of what President Richard Nixon had decreed "The Environmental Decade." A fixture in the Washington, D.C., environmental journalism community practically since the first international Earth Day, Flattau lays claim to being the nation´s most enduring nationally syndicated environmental columnist. A UPI Washington, D.C., reporter before taking over the twice-weekly syndicated column first launched by Stewart Udall, President John F. Kennedy´s Interior Secretary, Flattau has been opining ever since. At one point in his career, though not recently, his column was carried in scores of newspapers across the country. Flattau recounts his "40-year intellectual journey" in a new 435-page paperback Evolution of a Columnist, published by Global Horizons Press, through which for years he has been syndicating his column. Flattau´s balancing act -- between advocate and journalist -- is no mean trick, and not all may agree with the cover plug he receives from former Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau Chief Jack Nelson that he has succeeded in always writing "with the passion of an environmentalist, but ... with a journalist´s reverence for the facts." Make no mistake about it: Flattau takes no prisoners. Initially distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and then, from 1977 until 1985, by Artists and Writers Syndicate, Flatt

About the Author

Edward Flattau began his journalistic career as a reporter in the Albany, N.Y. United Press International Bureau in January of 1962. He became a political correspondent for United Press in New York State in 1964, covering the state legislature and then Governor Nelson Rockefeller. In 1967, Flattau transferred to the Washington United Press Bureau where he covered Congress, various federal agencies, and on occasion, even the White House. In the spring of 1972, he replaced Stewart Udall, former Interior Secretary under President Kennedy, as author of the country’s only nationally syndicated environmental column, which he has been writing to this day. He is the recipient of 10 national journalism awards, has reported from five different continents, and is the author of Tracking the Charlatans (1998), and Evolution of a Columnist (2003). In the spring of 1972, he was chosen to replace Stewart Udall, former Interior Secretary under President Kennedy, as author of the country’s only nationally syndicated environmental column, which he has been writing to this day. He is the recipient of 10 national journalism awards and reported from five different continents.