Bill Boyarsky, Contributor

Nancy Boyarsky

Bill Boyarsky is a lecturer in journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and is vice president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

Boyarsky was city editor of the Los Angeles Times when he retired in 2001.  Before that, he was a columnist, city-county bureau chief and political writer.  He was a member of reporting teams that won three Pulitzer prizes and he has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Greater Los Angeles Press Club.

He has also taught at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern, California State University at Northridge and the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.  He was given a fellowship at Berkeley for research on his biography of the late California political leader, Jesse M. Unruh. The book, Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics, was published by the University of California Press in November of 2007. 

Boyarsky is the author of four other books: The Rise of Ronald Reagan; Ronald Reagan, His Life and Rise to the Presidency; Los Angeles: City of Dreams; and Backroom Politics.  His wife, Nancy, was co-author of Backroom Politics.

He is a columnist for the Jewish Journal and blogs for LA Observed.