Todd S. Purdum is a journalist and author who most recently wrote for The Atlantic as a staff writer and California correspondent covering politics and culture, and is a contributor to Air Mail News. He has also been senior writer at POLITICO and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He spent 23 years with The New York Times, covering politics from city hall to the White House, and also serving as diplomatic correspondent and Los Angeles bureau chief. His most recent book is Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution (2018).

Purdum is a native of Macomb, Ill., and a graduate of Princeton University. He is the author of An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (2014) and he is currently writing a biography of Desi Arnaz for Simon & Schuster. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Dee Dee Myers, the former Clinton White House press secretary and now director of the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.

Purdum was a Spring 2021 Fellow at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, where he taught the course “Politics and the Press: How Did We Get Here, Where Are We Going?” He has also been an adjunct instructor at both Dornsife and Annenberg, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on topics involving the media and government.

Photo credit – Jeffrey MacMillan