A native Californian, Jim Newton is a veteran journalist, author and teacher. In 25 years at the Los Angeles Times, Newton worked as a reporter, editor, bureau chief, columnist and, from 2007 through 2010, editor of the editorial pages. He covered Los Angeles City Hall; state, local and national government and politics; the efforts to reform the LAPD in the 1990s; and the trials of O.J. Simpson and the officers who beat Rodney King, among many other assignments. Newton is the recipient of numerous national and local awards in journalism and participated in two staff efforts, coverage of the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Before coming to the Los Angeles Times, he was a reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he began his career as the 1985–86 clerk to New York Times columnist James Reston. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College. His senior thesis, on the effects of network television coverage on political perceptions, was awarded Dartmouth’s Pressman Prize, and a version of it was published in Polity: The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association, in the winter of 1987.
Newton moved to UCLA full-time in early 2015 to teach in Communication Studies and Public Policy and to found Blueprint, a UCLA magazine (blueprint.ucla.edu) addressing the policy challenges facing California and Los Angeles in particular. The magazine has been recognized for editorial and design excellence, and he serves as its editor-in-chief.
Newton also is a respected author of four important and critically acclaimed, bestselling works of history: Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made (Riverhead, 2006); Eisenhower: The White House Years (Doubleday, 2011); and Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace (Penguin Press, 2014), a collaboration with former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta that was a New York Times bestseller. His fourth book, Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown, is a history of California since 1960 as well as a biography of its longest-serving governor. It was released in May 2020.
Reviewing Newton’s biography of Jerry Brown, veteran journalist David Shribman wrote: “Man of Tomorrow is a thoughtful look at the governor who shaped the state that has always reached the American future before the rest of the country. It is the play of this man of the mind against the experience of a veteran newsman that makes this volume a formidable contribution to the history of both the state and the country.”
In 2023, Newton was honored with the Carey McWilliams Award, given annually by the American Political Science Association to a single person or organization in recognition of outstanding contributions to America’s understanding of political science.
Newton’s latest book, Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead and an American Awakening, is a biography of the Dead’s central figure as well as an extended reflection on the counterculture and its lasting impact on American life. It was published by Random House in 2025 and praised by Publishers Weekly, which described it as a “colorful and comprehensive portrait of a band and the dynamic sociopolitical moment in which it evolved.”
The first 200 people at this event will receive a FREE copy of Here Beside the Rising Tide.
Writers Series events are free to the public. This event will be live streaming. WATCH HERE.