Adam Nagourney

Life and career

Nagourney was born in New York City and graduated from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1977 with a B.A. in economics.

He began his career at the Gannett Westchester Newspaper (now The Journal News), where he worked from 1977–83 as a reporter in Putnam County, White Plains, and northern Westchester County. He then worked for the New York Daily News (1983–90) and USA Today (1990–1993), where he covered Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and the first year of the Clinton White House.

After joining The New York Times in 1996, Nagourney was assigned to cover the presidential campaign of Bob Dole. After the 1996 election, he became the paper's metropolitan political correspondent in New York. He was appointed chief political correspondent in 2002 and covered the 2004 re-election of President George W. Bush and the 2008 election of Barack Obama. He became the paper's Los Angeles bureau chief in the summer of 2010.

Nagourney is openly gay, as was his predecessor as chief political correspondent at the Times, Rick Berke. His brother, Eric Nagourney, is an editor at the Times.

Controversy

On June 16, 2015, Nagourney was one of three reporters on an article published in The New York Times titled "Deaths of Irish Students in Berkeley Balcony Collapse Cast Pall on Program". The article described students in the J-1 visa program as "a source of embarrassment for Ireland".

Nagourney "acknowledged that it could have been addressed in a more sensitive fashion" and said, "I absolutely was not looking to in any way appear to be blaming the victims, or causing pain in this awful time for their families and friends ... I feel very distressed at having added to their anguish."