NBC News president Steve Capus just announced that Michael Isikoff is joining the network as National Investigative Correspondent.
Isikoff, who spent 16 years with Newsweek, will rejoin his old boss — Mark Whitaker, who is now chief of NBC’s Washington Bureau. Whitaker was editor of Newsweek from 1998 to 2006. Last month, parent company Washington Post announced it was putting Newsweek up for sale.
Isikoff will report for all platforms of NBC News, including “NBC Nightly News,” “Today” and MSNBC — on which he has made countless appearances over the years.
“Michael is one of the most respected and distinguished investigative journalists in the business,” said Capus. “I am extremely proud of our investigative team and having Michael join the ranks of Lisa Myers, Chris Hansen and Pete Williams makes our investigative unit the strongest in the industry.”
Press release after the jump…
NEW YORK – June 7, 2010 – Michael Isikoff is joining NBC News as National Investigative Correspondent. The announcement was made today by NBC News President Steve Capus. Isikoff will report for all platforms of NBC News, including NBC Nightly News, Today and MSNBC. Isikoff will also contribute to msnbc.com in a branded destination for the web site.
Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball with Chris Matthews.
“Michael is one of the most respected and distinguished investigative journalists in the business,” said Steve Capus, President of NBC News. “I am extremely proud of our investigative team and having Michael join the ranks of Lisa Myers, Chris Hansen and Pete Williams makes our investigative unit the strongest in the industry.”
Isikoff joined Newsweek as an Investigative Correspondent in June 1994. He has written extensively on the U.S. government’s war on terrorism, the Abu Ghraib scandal, campaign-finance and congressional ethics abuses, presidential politics and other national issues. Isikoff’s blog DeClassified – Investigative Reporting in Real Time, written with Mark Hosenball and published on Newsweek.com, has become a must-read for senior U.S. officials. Isikoff and Hosenball’s previous web column, Terror Watch, also written for Newsweek.com, won the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists award for best investigative reporting online.
He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books – “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War,” co-written with David Corn and “Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter’s Story,” which chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story.
Since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government’s war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. Isikoff’s June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff’s exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998 and his coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff’s Lewinsky reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2009, Isikoff was named on a list of the 50 “Best and Most Influential Journalists” in the nation’s capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 1976.