Ethan Bronner Biography

Ethan Bronner (born 1954) is a senior editor at Bloomberg News following 17 years at The New York Times, most recently as deputy national editor. Bronner is a graduate of Wesleyan University’s College of Letters and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

He began his journalistic career at Reuters in 1980, reporting from London, Madrid, Brussels, and Jerusalem. From 1985 until 1997, he worked for The Boston Globe. He started as a general assignment and urban affairs reporter. He went on to be the paper’s Supreme Court and legal affairs correspondent in Washington, D.C. and then it’s Middle East correspondent, based in Jerusalem.

He then accepted a position with The New York Times, where he was the paper’s national education correspondent from 1997 to 1999 and its education editor from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, he transferred to the paper’s investigative unit which focused on the September 11 attacks.

A series of articles on al Qaeda that Bronner helped edit during that time was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism. He then served as assistant editorial page editor and in 2004, he became its deputy foreign editor. From 2008 to 2012 he was The Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief.

In 2012, he spent a year as the paper’s national legal reporter, then became its deputy national editor. In 2015, he accepted a position as a senior editor at Bloomberg News where he edits and writes investigative and analytic articles dealing mostly with international affairs.

Bronner is the author of Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America (Norton, 1989), which was chosen by The New York Public Library as one of the 25 best books of 1989.

Ethan Bronner Age

Ethan Bronner is a senior editor at Bloomberg News following 17 years at The New York Times, most recently as deputy national editor. He was born in 1954 (age 65 years)

Ethan Bronner Books

Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America Paperback – November 1, 2007

When President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, it was the spark that fueled a months-long firestorm during which liberals and conservatives battled fiercely over Reagan’s choice, each trying to gain control of the nation’s judicial future.

The American public, captivated by this struggle for power, weighed in with an unprecedented outpouring of mail and telephone calls to the United States Senate arguing both pro- and con- positions.

Based on scores of interviews with key figures and a shrewd analysis of the issues, then-Boston Globe reporter Ethan Bronner chronicles this engrossing story of a titanic struggle for political power.

It features key players such as Senators Joseph Biden and Edward Kennedy, with the latter leading the fight against the appointment using savvy Madison Avenue style strategies; a Justice Department desperate to hold its ground; a shocked White House staff, caught off-guard; and of course Bork himself, who insisted that “the process of confirming justices for our nations highest court has been transformed in a way that should not and indeed must not be permitted to occur again.”
Featuring a new epilogue, “Where Are They Now?”

Ethan Bronner Image

Ethan Bronner Wife, Married, Personal

Bronner and his wife Naomi Kehati, an Israeli-born psychologist, live near New York. They have two sons, Eli and Gabriel.

Ethan Bronner out as NYT Jerusalem chief

Two years* after the New York Times public editor recommended his reassignment, Ethan Bronner is being replaced as Jerusalem bureau chief. Read also John Darnton

Today, the Times announced that Education editor Jodi Rudoren has been named Jerusalem bureau chief. Bronner will become the legal affairs reporter at the National desk.

“For those of us who worked with him as deputy foreign editor, it came as no surprise that Ethan Bronner could navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of foreign stories, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as smoothly as he has,” foreign editor Joe Kahn and national editor Sam Sifton wrote in an internal memo, forwarded by a staffer.

“Ethan’s deep familiarity with Israel, his unerring sense of fairness, and his nose for what is really new in an exhaustively charted territory distinguished his work.”

Bronner’s 22-year-old son was* a member of the Israeli Defense Forces, a conflict of interest first raised by the website Electronic Intifada. Shortly thereafter, former public editor Clark Hoyt looked into the matter and found that, despite the ‘unerring sense of fairness’ mentioned above, Bronner’s son’s assignment put the bureau chief in a problematic position.

“Bronner is a superb reporter… But, stepping back, this is what I see: The Times sent a reporter overseas to provide disinterested coverage of one of the world’s most intense and potentially explosive conflicts, and now his son has taken up arms for one side,” he wrote last February. “Even the most sympathetic reader could reasonably wonder how that would affect the father, especially if shooting broke out.”

“I have enormous respect for Bronner and his work, and he has done nothing wrong,” he continued. “But this is not about punishment; it is simply a difficult reality. I would find a plum assignment for him somewhere else, at least for the duration of his son’s service in the I.D.F.”

Despite Hoyt’s recommendation, the paper did not reassign Bronner.

Rudoren, who covered Howard Dean and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election, helped The Times win its first Emmy Award for Metro’s One in 8 Million series, according to the memo.

“Like many good editors, though, Jodi is a reporter at heart and a ferociously competitive one,” Kahn and Sifton write. “She put Chicago politics back on the national map during her stint there and proved her mettle as a political correspondent during the 2004 presidential race. We’re thrilled to have her take on the unusually demanding role of Jerusalem correspondent.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated how long it had been since Hoyt, the former public editor, wrote his piece about Bronner’s son’s role in the Israeli Defense Forces. Bronner correctly informs me that it was two years ago, not one and that his son is therefore 22, not 21.

UPDATE: Bronner adds, via email:

My son, who is 22, not 21, left the Israeli army a year ago. And I have not been reassigned. I asked to return. It has been 4 years, my parents are in their 90s and I originally promised to stay only three years, both my sons are there, my wife wants to return to her psychoanalytic practice.

So we are coming home. I told the paper I wanted to keep writing. The national legal beat was suggested. I happily agreed.

Rudoren will begin in late April, per an email from Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.