David S. Broder

David Salzer Broder (September 11, 1929 – March 9, 2011) was an American journalist, writing for The Washington Post for over 40 years. He was also an author, television news show pundit, and university lecturer.

For more than half a century, Broder reported on every presidential campaign, beginning with the 1956 United States presidential election between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson II. Known as the dean of the Washington, D.C. press corps, Broder made over 400 appearances on NBC's Meet the Press. The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 stated: "Broder is the best of an almost extinct species, the daily news reporter who doubles as an op-ed page columnist....With his solid reporting and shrewd analysis, Broder remains one of the sager voices in Washington."

David Salzer Broder was born to a Jewish family in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the son of Albert "Doc" Broder, a dentist, and Nina Salzer Broder.

He earned a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from the University of Chicago in 1947 and continued his studies there, receiving a master's degree in political science in 1951. While at Chicago, he met fellow student Ann Creighton Collar, and they were married in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1951. They had four sons—George, Joshua, Matthew, and Michael—and seven grandchildren.

Broder began working as a journalist while pursuing his master's degree, serving as editor of The Chicago Maroon and later at the Hyde Park Herald. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1951, where he wrote for the newspaper U.S. Forces Austria (USFA) Sentinel, until he was discharged from the Army in 1953.

In 1953 Broder reported for The Pantagraph in Bloomington, Illinois, covering Livingston and Woodford counties in the central part of the state. From there he moved to the Congressional Quarterly in Washington D.C., in 1955, where he apprenticed under senior reporter Helen Monberg and got his first taste of covering congressional politics. During his four-and-a-half years at CQ, Broder also worked for The New York Times as a freelance writer.

In 1960 Broder joined The Washington Star as a junior political writer covering the presidential election that year between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. During his five years at the Star, he was promoted to a national political news reporter and was a weekly contributor to the paper's op-ed page.

Broder left the Star for The New York Times in 1965, hired by well-known Times political reporter and columnist Tom Wicker to serve in its Washington bureau.