Dan Balz

Who is Dan Balz?

Daniel J. Balz is an American journalist at The Washington Post, where he has been a political correspondent since 1978. Balz has served as National Editor, Political Editor, White House correspondent and as the Washington Post's Texas-based Southwest correspondent. Balz sometimes appears on the news show Meet the Press and frequently appears on the PBS program Washington Week. In April 2011 the White House Correspondents' Association honored Balz with the prestigious Merriman Smith Award for excellence in presidential coverage under deadline pressure.

Balz is co-author, with Ronald Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times, of the 1996 book Storming the Gates: Protest Politics and the Republican Revival. In 1999, Balz received the American Political Science Association award for political coverage.

Balz's latest work, co-written with Pulitzer Prize winner Haynes Johnson in 2009, is The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election about the 2008 campaign, is based on two years of reporting, and includes exclusive interviews with President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain and many of the top advisers to the major candidates in the 2008 election.

Before coming to the Washington Post, he worked as a reporter and deputy editor for National Journal and as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer.