Gene Weingarten
Gene Norman Weingarten is an American syndicated humor columnist at The Washington Post. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and is the only person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing twice. Weingarten is known for both his serious and humorous work. Weingarten's column, "Below the Beltway," is published weekly in The Washington Post magazine and syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group, which also syndicates Barney & Clyde, a comic strip he co-authors with his son, Dan Weingarten, with illustrations by David Clark.
Early life and education
Gene Norman Weingarten was born on October 2, 1951, in New York City. He grew up in the southwest Bronx, the son of an accountant who worked as an Internal Revenue Service agent and a schoolteacher. In 1968, Weingarten graduated from The Bronx High School of Science and attended New York University, where he started as a pre-med student but ended up majoring in psychology. He was editor of the NYU daily student newspaper, The Heights Daily News. Weingarten left college three credits short of a degree.Career
In 1972, while still in college, Weingarten's story about gangs in the South Bronx was published as a cover story in New York Magazine.Weingarten's first newspaper job was with the Albany, New York, Knickerbocker News, an afternoon daily.
In 1977, he went to work at the Detroit Free Press. Weingarten then moved back to New York City to work at The National Law Journal.
From 1981 to 1990, Weingarten was editor of the Miami Herald Sunday magazine, Tropic. In 1984, he hired Dave Barry, giving one of America's best-known humor columnists his big break. Tropic won two Pulitzer Prizes, including Barry's, during Weingarten's tenure. In 1984 he created the Herald Hunt, along with Barry and his current editor at the Washington Post, Tom Shroder, whom he refers to frequently in his online chats as "Tom the Butcher".
''The Washington Post''
In 1990, Weingarten was hired by The Washington Post.Weingarten writes "Below the Beltway," a weekly humor column for The Washington Post that is nationally syndicated. Illustrator Eric Shansby contributes drawings to the column, which has been a long-term collaboration over 10 years.
Weingarten created and, until 2003, edited The Style Invitational humor contest for The Washington Post. As part of the contest, he often hid his connection to the Invitational, using the pseudonym "The Czar." However, Weingarten admitted responsibility in 1999, writing, "I run a reader-participation contest every Sunday in The Post. It is called The Style Invitational." He claimed credit again in 2001, acknowledging that he was editor of The Style Invitational.
In 2005, one of Weingarten's in-house critiques was leaked online, where he said The Post was suffering a failure of imagination. Selected passages were later re-posted on his column.
Weingarten hosts a popular Washington Post online chat called "Chatological Humor," formerly known as "Tuesdays with Moron." Common topics in his online chat include the art of comic strips, analysis of humor, politics, philosophy, medicine, and gender differences. Many of his columns addressing gender differences have been written in a he-said, she-said style in collaboration with humorist Gina Barreca, his co-author for I'm with Stupid. It was during one of these chats he coined the phrase "Marrying Irving." Weingarten writes that humor quality is objective, not subjective, and claims to be the final arbiter on the subject. Since beginning publication of the Barney & Clyde strip on June 10, 2010, he has significantly reduced comic strip discussion in the chat, believing it to be a conflict of interest. However, he will still answer questions posed by other contributors to the chat.
In 2007, for one of his "Below the Beltway" columns, he humorously enhanced his Wikipedia entry until he was caught and the edits reverted.
In his live online chat on June 22, 2009, Weingarten disclosed that he had accepted a buyout offer from The Washington Post, which meant he was retiring as a longer-form feature writer. The frequency of his online chat was reduced from weekly to monthly, although he provides weekly updates. His column will continue under a contract with The Post but he will no longer contribute feature-length articles. As of 2011, he was semi-retired from the paper, working on other projects.
''The Hypochondriac's Guide To Life. And Death''
Weingarten is a self-acknowledged hypochondriac. He was diagnosed with what was then a near-fatal infection of Hepatitis C, which led to the publication his first book, 1998's The Hypochondriac's Guide To Life. And Death.''I'm with Stupid: One Man, One Woman''
Weingarten cowrote a series of humor columns in The Washington Post with feminist writer Gina Barreca about the differences between men and women. These became the basis of the 2004 book she and Weingarten collaborated on called I'm with Stupid: One Man. One Woman. 10,000 Years Of Misunderstandings Between The Sexes Cleared Right Up. The two wrote for over two years via email and on the phone without having met in person. They eventually met for the first time while doing publicity for the book. The book is illustrated by cartoonist Richard Thompson.''Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs''
In fall of 2008, Weingarten published Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs in collaboration with photographer Michael S. Williamson. Together they profiled and photographed 63 dogs between the ages of 10 and 17 years old over the course of two and a half years. In response to the inevitable question of which dogs remained alive, Weingarten has asserted that the answer will always be "all of them." Weingarten's inspiration for Old Dogs came shortly after the death of his dog, Harry S Truman, who is also featured in the book.''Barney & Clyde''
In June 2010, Weingarten and his son Dan began publishing the syndicated comic strip Barney & Clyde, illustrated by David Clark. The comic is about the friendship between billionaire, J. Barnard Pillsbury, and a homeless man named Clyde Finster. The comic took over five years to develop, with the Miami Herald, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune early supporters.''Me & Dog''
In September 2014, Weingarten published Me & Dog, a picture book, in collaboration with illustrator Eric Shansby. The book is about a young boy Sid and his dog, Murphy. It is said to be the first atheist-themed children's book. Weingarten said he wrote the book in response to the lack of literature geared towards children and atheism − and a counterbalance to the prevalence of books like Heaven Is for Real.''One Day''
In October 2019 Weingarten published One Day, an exhaustive look into a random day in American history. The date was chosen by children picking numbers out of a hat: It was December 28, 1986. The premise was that if you dig deeply enough, there is no such thing as an ordinary day. In a review, Slate said One Day was one of the 50 best nonfiction books published in the last 25 years.Other work
Weingarten has written three screenplays, one in collaboration with humorist Dave Barry and two in collaboration with David Simon, including B Major, about a piano marathon conducted in Scranton in 1970. None of the screenplays has yet been produced.Awards
From 1987 to 1988, Weingarten was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.In 2006, Weingarten won the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Award for Multicultural Journalism for his Washington Post Magazine feature article Snowbound.
In 2008, Weingarten was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his Washington Post story, "Pearls Before Breakfast," "his chronicling of a world-class violinist who, as an experiment, played beautiful music in a subway station filled with unheeding commuters." The night Weingarten returned from accepting his Pulitzer Prize, he received an email from a librarian named Paul Musgrave from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, who told him that he had recently seen an article about a similar experiment that the Chicago Evening Post did in May 1930 where they had the virtuoso Jacques Gordon play his Stradivarius violin outside a subway station to see if commuters would notice the music. The article, entitled "Famous Fiddler in Disguise Gets $5.61 in Curb Concerts," showed commuters displaying the same disinterest as Weingarten described in his article. It turns out Joshua Bell had owned that same Stradivarius violin for over 10 years.
In 2010, Weingarten was awarded a second Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his Washington Post story, "Fatal Distraction," "his haunting story about parents, from varying walks of life, who accidentally kill their children by forgetting them in cars." Weingarten said he had a lucky break when his daughter was younger when he almost left her behind in the car when they lived in Florida.
In 2014, Weingarten was awarded the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award.
Personal life
Weingarten has lived in many places on the East Coast, but as he and his family settled in the Washington, D.C., area, they lived for a time in Bethesda, Maryland. Since 2001 he has lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., with his wife, Arlene Reidy, an attorney, but in a column published August 10, 2017, announced that the marriage had collapsed. He has since made several references to a girlfriend in online chats, and at least one column, and in his chat of June 2, 2019, revealed that his girlfriend was Rachel Manteuffel, a 35-year-old editor and fellow writer for the Washington Post. He has two children, Molly Weingarten, a veterinarian, and Dan Weingarten, a cartoonist.Weingarten has stated he is an atheist. He is an amateur horologist.