Alan Greenblatt
Alan Greenblatt has been covering politics and government in Washington and around the country for 20 years. He came to NPR as a digital reporter in 2010, writing about a wide range of topics, including elections, housing economics, natural disasters and same-sex marriage.
He was previously a reporter with Governing, a magazine that covers state and local government issues. Alan wrote about education, budgets, economic development and legislative behavior, among other topics. He is the coauthor, with Kevin Smith, of Governing States and Localities, a college-level textbook that is now in its fourth edition.
As a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, he was the inaugural winner of the National Press Club's Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, which is given to outstanding reporters under the age of 35. Sadly, he no longer meets that requirement.
Along the way, Alan has contributed articles about politics and culture for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is happy to be working for an outlet where he has been able to write about everything from revolutions in the Middle East to antique jazz recordings.
Alan is a graduate of San Francisco State University and holds a master's degree from the University of Virginia.
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The World War II generation had a sense of serving the country together and also shared a belief in professionalism, one historian says. Still, Bush was not afraid to get personal with campaign foes. -
Having offended its own staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has canceled a course intended to help employees "speak with a more neutral American accent."
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People are less likely to seek shelter or otherwise prepare for storms given female names, researchers say. As a result, such storms result in nearly twice as many deaths as those with male names. -
Three to six hurricanes are expected to form during the six-month season that begins June 1. That's below average, but NOAA officials emphasized a single storm can make for a bad year. -
With murders down dramatically, death penalty support has fallen far from its peak 20 years ago. Problems with executions, meanwhile, have made many Democrats, at least, skeptical about the practice. -
Democrats currently control city hall in 90 percent of the nation's largest cities. But not too many years ago, Republicans had a pretty good chance of winning big-city mayoral races. -
The tipped minimum wage has been stuck at $2.13 an hour since 1991. In states where servers make more than the federal minimum wage, restaurants haven't been hurting. -
Over the past year, four lieutenant governors have resigned amid scandal. Lieutenant governors may not have much power, but they're certainly capable of getting into trouble. -
If Congress can't agree to raise the debt ceiling before Thursday, it's not necessarily the case that Treasury will immediately be unable to pay bills. But if there's no agreement, financial markets might panic at any time, doing real harm. -
In all, 36 states will be voting for governor in 2014. All but a handful of those races will feature incumbents favored for re-election. Here's a look at a few who could be toast.
