Michael R. Meyer

For those of a similar name, see Michael Mayer.

Michael Ryder Meyer, author and journalist, is currently chief speechwriter for the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon.^[1][2]

He has also written The Year That Changed The World: The Untold Story of The Fall of The Berlin Wall. His previous book, The Alexander Complex was published by Times Books. Before his post at the United Nations, Meyer was at Newsweek Magazine for two decades, most recently (2001–2007) as Europe Editor for Newsweek International, where he also oversaw the magazine's coverage of the Middle East and Asia.^[3]

Biography

Early life and education

He holds a B.A. from Hamilton College and received graduate degrees from Columbia University School of Journalism and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Career

Meyer worked at The Washington Post and Congressional Quarterly before joining Newsweek in 1988.

Between 1988 and 1992, Meyer was Newsweek's bureau chief for Germany, Central Europe and the Balkans, writing more than 20 cover stories on the break-up of communist Europe and German unification. During this period, he witnessed firsthand many of the key events of 1989 and the fall of communism, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the revolutions of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. He was the last western journalist to interview the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu, just before he was shot. He went on to cover the collapse of the Soviet Union, from Moscow to the Baltics. Beginning in the early '90s, he traveled widely throughout the Balkans, writing of the coming war in Europe and covering the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Meyer is the winner of two Overseas Press Club Awards.

From 1993 through 1999, Meyer was Newsweek's general editor for business and technology, covering the Internet revolution and receiving several prizes including the 1995 Computer Press Award. He was Newsweek's Los Angeles bureau chief from 1992 to 1993, the second-largest of Newsweek's bureaus, where he wrote and reported stories from the politics of immigration to Hollywood's studio wars to the Los Angeles riots, for which he shared in a 1993 National Magazine Award for General Excellence.

From 1999 to 2001, Meyer took a sabbatical from Newsweek to work on a diplomatic posting with the United Nations mission in Kosovo, where he was a senior staff officer for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe with principal responsibility for nation-building and civil society. He was hired to start the first news agency in that region and was founding director of KosovaLive. He returned to Newsweek in 2001 as Europe Editor for Newsweek International, where he also oversaw the magazine's coverage of the Middle East and Asia.

Meyer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was an Spring 1999 Fellow, at the American Academy in Berlin.

Works

• "A Break in the Fence". NEWSWEEK. May 4, 2009. http://www.newsweek.com/id/195078. 
• "The Wink That Changed the World This is the way the Warsaw Pact folded, not with a bang but a gesture." slate, July 6, 2009
• "Scaling the Berlin Wall", The Daily Beast, October 31, 2009

Books

• The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Simon and Schuster. 2009. ISBN 9781416558453. http://books.google.com/books?id=5kSxHmtBOnUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Michael+Meyer+year&cd=7#v=onepage&q=&f=false. 
• The Alexander Complex. Times Books. 1989. ISBN 9780812916621. 

References

1. ^ [1] UN News Centre 10 May 2007
2. ^ http://www.wfuna.org/site/c.rvIYIcN1JwE/b.3783533/
3. ^ http://www.wnyc.org/thegreenespace/events/2009/oct/27/room-view-fall-berlin-wall/

External links

• Dealing with Serbia
• A Perfect Storm
• "The Suicide of the East?", Foreign Affairs, Philip D. Zelikow, November/December 2009
• Victor Sebestyen (2 December 2009). "Before and after the Fall". The Spectator. http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/5591283/before-and-after-the-fall.thtml. 
• Audio interview with Michael Meyer

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