James B Stewart

Early life and education

Stewart was born in Quincy, Illinois. He graduated from DePauw University and Harvard Law School.

Career

He is a member of the Bar of New York, the Bloomberg Professor of Business and Economic Journalism at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Editor-at-Large of SmartMoney magazine, and author of Tangled Webs: How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff (2011). He is a former associate at New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which he left in 1979 to become executive editor of The American Lawyer magazine. He later joined The Wall Street Journal, where in 1988 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for his articles about the 1987 dramatic upheaval in the stock market and insider trading. These writings led to the publishing of his best-selling work of non-fiction called Den of Thieves (1991), which recounted the criminal conduct of Wall Street arbitrager Ivan Boesky and junk bond king Michael Milken. Stewart became page one editor of The Wall Street Journal in 1988 and remained at the paper until 1992, when he left to help found SmartMoney.

Stewart's book, Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story Of A Doctor Who Got Away With Murder (1999), won the 2000 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category. DisneyWar (2005), his book on Michael Eisner's reign at Disney, won the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book. In 2007, he was ranked 21st on Out magazine's 50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Women in America. He is currently a contributor to The New Yorker and a columnist for The New York Times, which he joined in 2011. Stewart also serves on the board of advisory trustees of his alma mater, DePauw University, and is past president of that board.

Published works

Awards

Stewart was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2002 in the area of Communications.