The Washington Journalism and Media Conference

MICHAEL D. SHEAR

White House Correspondent, The New York Times

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize winning reporter in the Washington bureau, where he covers President Biden, with a focus on domestic policy, the regulatory state and life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  A veteran political correspondent, he has covered the White House for 13 years, including the Trump and Obama presidencies.

Mr. Shear joined The Times in 2010, and has written extensively about national politics and policy-making in Washington. He documented Mr. Obama’s history-making presidency, including extensive reporting on passage of the Affordable Care Act and unsuccessful efforts at comprehensive immigration reform. He covered all four years of Mr. Trump’s chaotic presidency, and is the co-author of “BORDER WARS: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration,” published in 2019 by Simon & Schuster. Mr. Shear reported from Capitol Hill during the first Trump impeachment, documenting the attempt by Democrats to oust him from office over his effort to strong-arm Ukraine’s government for dirt on a political opponent.

During 2020, Mr. Shear worked with investigative teams at The Times to document the Trump administration’s response to the Covid crisis. He was a leading member of the team that won the Pulitzer Public Service prize for the paper’s coverage of the pandemic and its health and economic consequences. As he did during each of the prior two administrations, Mr. Shear travels the world with Mr. Biden, including a recent trip to Europe for a high-stakes meeting with President Putin of Russia.

Before coming to The Times in 2010, Mr. Shear spent 18 years at The Washington Post, writing about local communities, school districts, state politics, the 2008 presidential campaign and the White House. A member of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, Mr. Shear is a 1990 graduate of Claremont McKenna College and has a masters in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has two college-age children and lives in Washington with his wife.