{{Short description|American journalist, editor, and author (1926–2023)}} {{Other uses}} {{lead too short|date=November 2023}} {{Use mdy dates|date=November 2023}} {{Infobox person | name = <!-- use common name/article title --> | image = Charles Peters.JPG | alt = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software --> | caption = Peters in 2008 | birth_name = Charles Given Peters Jr. | birth_date = {{Birth date|1926|12|22}} | birth_place = Charleston, West Virginia, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|2023|11|23|1926|12|22}} | death_place = Washington, D.C., U.S. | education = Columbia University (BA, MA)<br>University of Virginia School of Law (JD) | occupation = {{hlist|Journalist|editor|author|politician}} | known_for = Founding the ''Washington Monthly'' | spouse = {{marriage|Elizabeth Hubbell|1957}} | children = 1 | political_party = Democratic | module = {{infobox officeholder | embed = yes | office = Member of the West Virginia House of Delegates | term_start = 1960 | term_end = 1962 }} }}
'''Charles Given Peters Jr.''' (December 22, 1926 – November 23, 2023) was an American journalist, editor, and author. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of the ''Washington Monthly'' magazine and the author of ''We Do Our Part: Toward A Fairer and More Equal America'' (Random House, 2017). Writing in ''The New York Times'', Jonathan Martin called the book a "well timed … ''cri de coeur''" and "a desperate plea to his country and party to resist the temptations of greed, materialism and elitism."
== Early life and education == Charles Given Peters Jr. was born in December 1926 in Charleston, West Virginia.<ref name=Wapo>{{cite news |last1=Smith |first1=Timothy R. |title=Charles Peters, Washington Monthly founder, dies at 96 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/11/23/charlie-peters-washington-monthly-dies/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=November 23, 2023}}</ref> He attended public schools, graduating from Charleston High School in 1944. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1944, serving at Ohio University, Camp Atterbury in Indiana, and Fort McClellan, Alabama, where an injury in a training accident resulted in his being in Army hospitals for several months, and his discharge from the Army in 1946.<ref name = McFadden>{{cite news|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/23/us/politics/charles-peters-dead.html|title = Charles Peters, Founder of The Washington Monthly, Is Dead at 96|newspaper = The New York Times|last = McFadden|first = Robert D.|authorlink = Robert D. McFadden|date = November 25, 2023|accessdate = November 25, 2023|page = A25|url-access = limited}}</ref>
In 1946, he went to New York City to enter Columbia College. After receiving his BA in 1949,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Norman Podhoretz '50 Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom|url=https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/nov04/profiles1.html|url-status=live|access-date=September 9, 2021|website=www.college.columbia.edu|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200729023359/https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/nov04/profiles1.html |archive-date=July 29, 2020 }}</ref> he entered graduate school at Columbia and received his MA. in 1951. In 1952–53, he worked for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York. During the summers from 1946 through 1954, he performed various backstage roles at summer theaters in Boylston, Massachusetts; Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Newport, Rhode Island. He had his own repertory company in Charleston, West Virginia.<ref name = Wapo/>
Peters entered the University of Virginia School of Law in 1954. He was named to the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review in 1955, serving until his graduation with a JD in 1957.<ref name = McFadden/>
== Early career == Peters returned to Charleston to practice law with his father's firm, Peters, Merricks, Leslie and Mohler. His practice included libel, criminal defense, corporate and labor law, as well as representing plaintiffs and defendants in civil trials.<ref name = Wapo/>
In 1959, he was named chief staff officer of the Judiciary Committee of the West Virginia House of Delegates, and in 1960, he was elected a member of the House.<ref name = McFadden/> In 1960, he also managed the primary and general election campaigns in Kanawha County for presidential candidate John F. Kennedy. After serving in the 1961 session of the legislature, he went to Washington, D.C., to help start the Peace Corps. After returning to serve in the 1962 legislative session, he was named the Peace Corps' director of evaluation, a position that required him to report on the performance of the agency's programs overseas and on how they could be improved.<ref name = McFadden/>
== Founding of the ''Washington Monthly'' == In 1968, Peters resigned from the Peace Corps to begin planning a new magazine to be called the ''Washington Monthly''.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} The magazine's prospectus said its purpose would be "to look at Washington the way an anthropologist looks at a South Sea island," helping the reader understand our system of politics and government, where it breaks down, why it breaks down, and what can be done to make it work."{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} The first issue was published in January 1969.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} Its articles included "The White House Staff vs. the Cabinet," "What Happens to a Senator's Day," and "The Data Game." Among the authors were such journalists as David Broder, Murray Kempton, Russell Baker, and Calvin Trillin, as well as people who had worked in government, such as Peters, former White House aide Bill Moyers, and former U.S. Senate aide James Boyd. A similar mix of authors would continue to write for the magazine, but beginning in 1970, the magazine became largely the product of young unknowns, who would typically serve as writer-editors for two years. Among them were Taylor Branch, Suzannah Lessard, James Fallows, Walter Shapiro, Michael Kinsley, David Ignatius, Nicholas Lemann, Gregg Easterbrook, Mickey Kaus, Joe Nocera, Jonathan Alter, Timothy Noah, Steve Waldman, Matt Cooper, Jason DeParle, James Bennet, Katherine Boo, and Jon Meacham. {{citation needed|date=November 2023}}
Peters and the magazine have been characterized as important influences on neoliberalism<ref name = McFadden/> and radical centrism.<ref>{{cite book | title=Radical Middle: The Politics We Need Now | publisher=Westview Press and Basic Books | year=2004 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/radicalmiddlepol00sati/page/22 22–23] | isbn=978-0-8133-4190-3 | last=Satin | first=Mark | authorlink=Mark Satin | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/radicalmiddlepol00sati/page/22 }}</ref>
Peters served as editor of the ''Washington Monthly'' until he retired in 2001, but continued to write a regular column ''Tilting at Windmills'' for the magazine until 2014.<ref name="WindmillsJan2014">{{cite journal | url=http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2014/tilting_at_windmills/why_bad_news_should_always_tri048348.php?page=all | title=Tilting at Windmills : Why bad news should always trickle up.... | author=Peters, Charles | journal=The Washington Monthly | date=Jan–Feb 2014 | accessdate=May 24, 2014 | archive-date=March 4, 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304044601/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2014/tilting_at_windmills/why_bad_news_should_always_tri048348.php?page=all | url-status=dead }}</ref> Russell Baker, in an interview in the alumni magazine ''Columbia College Today'', called Peters "a great editor in an age that's not producing great editors."<ref name="PetersBio">{{cite web | url=http://understandinggov.org/about/president-staff/charles-peters-bio/ | title=Charles Peters' Bio | publisher=Understanding Government | accessdate=May 24, 2014 | url-status=dead | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140525195253/http://understandinggov.org/about/president-staff/charles-peters-bio/ | archivedate=May 25, 2014 }}</ref>
== Founding of Understanding Government == In 1998, he founded a non-profit organization called Understanding Government with the purpose of improving press coverage of the executive branch of government. Understanding Government sponsored the first-ever Prize for Preventive Journalism, given in 2008 to journalist Michael Grunwald, and has published reports on federal agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Peters retired from the nonprofit in 2012, and it ceased operations in 2014.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}
== Personal life, illness and death == In 1957, Peters married Elizabeth Hubbell, a former ballet dancer who had attended Vassar College. They had a son.<ref name = McFadden/>
After several years of poor health due to heart failure, Peters died at his home in Washington, D.C. on November 23, 2023, at the age of 96.<ref name=Wapo/><ref name = McFadden/>
== Books == ;Author:{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} *''We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America'' *''Lyndon B. Johnson'' *''Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing 'We Want Willkie!' Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World'' *''How Washington Really Works'' *''Tilting At Windmills: An Autobiography''
;Co-editor:{{citation needed|date=November 2023}} *''Blowing the Whistle'' (with Taylor Branch) *''The System'' (with James Fallows) *''The Culture of Bureaucracy'' (with Michael Nelson) *''A New Road for America: the Neoliberal Movement'' (with Phil Keisling) *''Inside the System'' (with Timothy Adams – first ed.; with John Rothchild – second ed.; with James Fallows – third ed.; with Nicholas Lemann – fourth ed.; with Jonathan Alter – fifth ed.)
== Articles == *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090704144953/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/1983/8305_Neoliberalism.pdf ''A Neoliberal's Manifesto'']
== Awards == {{More citations needed section|date=February 2026}} Peters was named the recipient of a number of awards over his career, including
* the first Richard M. Clurman Award in 1996 for his work mentoring young journalists.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Past Clurman Award Recipients |url=https://wallacehouse.umich.edu/livingston-awards/clurman-award/past-recipients/ |access-date=2026-02-17 |website=Wallace House Center for Journalists |language=en-US}}</ref> * the Columbia Journalism Award in 1978 and was a Poynter Fellow at Yale University in 1980.<ref name="journalism.columbia.edu">{{Cite web |title=Columbia Journalism Award {{!}} Columbia Journalism School |url=https://journalism.columbia.edu/columbia-journalism-award |access-date=2026-02-17 |website=journalism.columbia.edu}}</ref> * the Carr Van Anda Award from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Understanding Government » Charles Peters' Bio |url=https://understandinggov.org/understanding-government-charles-peters-bio/ |access-date=2026-02-17 |website=Understanding Government |language=en-US}}</ref>
As well as his awards, he received a number of notable ceremonial appointments and positions, such as a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1994.<ref name="journalism.columbia.edu"/> In 2001, he was elected to the Hall of Fame of the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Hall of Fame of the D.C. Society of Professional Journalists. In 2002 he was the Times Mirror David A. Laventhol Visiting Professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. He was a Public Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, September 2002 through April 2003.
== References == {{reflist|30rm}}
==External links== *The West Virginia & Regional History Center at West Virginia University houses the Charles Peters papers within the Distinguished West Virginians Archive *''[https://www.amazon.com/Tilting-Windmills-Autobiography-Charles-Peters/dp/0201524155 Tilting at Windmills listing]'' *[https://web.archive.org/web/20100310214027/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/inside/bios/charlespeters.html ''Washington Monthly bio''] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090930080058/http://understandinggov.org/about/charles-peters-bio/ ''Understanding Government bio''] *[http://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/WV/ofc/sthse1960s.html ''The Political Graveyard''] *[http://thecharlieproject.com ''How Washington Really Works''] (documentary about Charles Peters and the Washington Monthly) *{{C-SPAN|1478}} {{s-start}} {{succession box | before= Founding editor| title= Editor-in-chief of the ''Washington Monthly''| years= 1969–2001 | after= Paul Glastris }} {{s-end}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peters, Charles}} Category:1926 births Category:2023 deaths Category:20th-century American biographers Category:20th-century American lawyers Category:21st-century American male writers Category:American columnists Category:American magazine editors Category:American male biographers Category:American male journalists Category:American political writers Category:Charleston High School (West Virginia) alumni Category:Columbia College, Columbia University alumni Category:Deaths from congestive heart failure in the United States Category:Democratic Party members of the West Virginia House of Delegates Category:Journalists from West Virginia Category:Lawyers from Charleston, West Virginia Category:Radical centrist writers Category:United States Army personnel of World War II Category:United States Army soldiers Category:University of Virginia School of Law alumni Category:Washington, D.C., Democrats Category:West Virginia lawyers Category:Writers from Charleston, West Virginia Category:20th-century members of the West Virginia Legislature Category:Military personnel from Charleston, West Virginia