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Linton Weeks

Credit Doby Photography / NPR

Linton Weeks joined NPR in the summer of 2008, as its national correspondent for Digital News. He immediately hit the campaign trail, covering the Democratic and Republican National Conventions; fact-checking the debates; and exploring the candidates, the issues and the electorate.

Weeks is originally from Tennessee, and graduated from Rhodes College in 1976. He was the founding editor of Southern Magazine in 1986. The magazine was bought — and crushed — in 1989 by Time-Warner. In 1990, he was named managing editor of The Washington Post's Sunday magazine. Four years later, he became the first director of the newspaper's website, Washingtonpost.com. From 1995 until 2008, he was a staff writer in the Style section of The Washington Post.

He currently lives in a suburb of Washington with the artist Jan Taylor Weeks. In 2009, they created The Stone and Holt Weeks Foundation to honor their beloved sons.

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Presidential Race
2:22 pm
Fri January 20, 2012

Does Regionalism Matter Anymore, Y'all?

Credit Emmanuel Dunand / AFP/Getty Images
The presidential election brings out the media's obsession with regional differences. Reporters and politicians do stand-ups from cornfields in the Midwest, beaches in California, honky-tonks in Texas — and in front of this sand sculpture of the GOP candidates in Myrtle Beach, S.C., last weekend.
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The race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination is fixing to get, as we Southerners tongue-in-cheekly say, about as slippery as a greased pig in a hog wallow. Nasty as a old possum in a croaker sack. Murky as South Carolina swamp mud.

The Republican primary focus is shifting to the South, where folks talk and act different from the rest of the country. And where they look for different characteristics in candidates than other regions of the ...

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Politics
11:30 am
Fri January 13, 2012

When Did 'Kumbaya' Become Such A Bad Thing?

Credit Jeff Siner / MCT/Landov
Texas Gov. Rick Perry greets voters Jan. 10 after speaking to a town hall meeting in Indian Land, S.C. He has said that if voters want someone to sing "Kumbaya," "I'm not your guy."
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Around the Nation
5:07 am
Sun January 8, 2012

A Year After Tucson Tragedies, Incivility Continues

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Credit Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
Captain Mark Kelly hugs his wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at the White House in October.
Credit Office of Gabrielle Giffords / AP
In a video released Jan. 22, Giffords announces her plans to resign from Congress in order to concentrate on recovering from a gunshot wound to the head.
Credit Susan Walsh / AP
Giffords reenacts her swearing-in with House Speaker John Boehner. The Democrat has represented Arizona's 8th congressional district since 2007.
Credit Laura Segall / Getty Images
Giffords was shot in the head during an event to meet constituents in Tucson, Ariz., on Jan. 8, 2011. Six people were killed and 13 wounded in the attack.
Credit U.S. Marshal's Office / AP
Jared Loughner was charged with the shooting. In May, a federal judge ruled Loughner incompetent to stand trial and ordered that he receive treatment.
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People pay their respects at a makeshift memorial outside Giffords' Tucson office a day after the shooting.
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Members of Congress and their staff gather on the steps of the House of Representatives on Jan. 10 for a national moment of silence to honor the shooting victims.
Credit U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' office via Getty Images
Kelly holds Giffords' hand in her hospital room at University Medical Center in Tucson on Jan. 11.
Credit Matt York / AP
Daniel Hernandez, an intern with Giffords at the time of the shooting, is credited with saving the congresswoman's life.
Credit Jewel Samad / AFP/Getty Images
President Obama hugs Kelly during a memorial service, "Together We Thrive: Tucson and America," at the McKale Memorial Center in Tucson on Jan. 12.
Credit Office of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords / AP
Kelly stands over his wife's hospital bed on a deck outside University Medical Center on Jan. 20.
Credit NASA / Getty Images
Kelly was mission commander for the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour. The shuttle launched May 16 on a 16-day mission.
Credit Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
Patricia Maisch (right), who helped disarm Loughner, embraces Georgia Lerner, whose mother died in the shooting. Maisch testified on Capitol Hill in support of a bill to strengthen background checks for people who buy firearms.
Credit House Television / AP
Giffords appears on the floor of the House of Representatives for the first time since she was shot to vote on a debt standoff compromise on Aug. 1.
Credit Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
Kelly hugs his wife after receiving the Legion of Merit from Vice President Joe Biden during a retirement ceremony on Oct. 6.
Credit Ross D. Franklin / AP
Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, wave at the start of a memorial in Tuscon, Ariz, on Jan. 8. The vigil marked the anniversary of the shooting rampage that left six dead and 13 injured, including Giffords.
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Originally published on Wed May 23, 2012 10:09 am

When a gunman opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others at a shopping center near Tucson exactly a year ago — killing six people and injuring Giffords and many others — some people were quick to blame the episode on the overheated political climate.

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Presidential Race
11:20 am
Wed January 4, 2012

U.S. Politics: Hurrah For The Red, White And Screwy

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Voters register to cast their ballots during Republican caucuses at a school in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday.
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The American political system — as corny, eclectic, chaotic and screwed up as it is with its straw polls, caucuses, primaries and contested elections — somehow gets the job done time after time.

It's weird, really: In this country that celebrates unity and national spirit, a president is chosen via quirky, jerky state-by-state (sometimes precinct-by-precinct) methods. In this society that seeks perfection, the leader is selected in a painfully imperfect process.

But, to paraphrase the old saw: Our funky form of democracy may just be the least worst way to govern.

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Around the Nation
2:11 pm
Fri December 30, 2011

'Haters' Are Going To Hate This Story

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Credit Mark Lennihan / AP
The word "Hater" — as it's often used today — is derived from the term "Player Hater," a phrase popularized by late rapper Notorious B.I.G., shown here clutching his Billboard Music Awards in 1995.
Credit iStockphoto.com
A fist with the word "hate" on it.
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Originally published on Sat December 31, 2011 6:20 am

Haters are here. And there. And everywhere. And the word "hate" is in the air.

Fox has a new sitcom: I Hate My Teenage Daughter. A recent issue of Us magazine tells us "Why Scarlett Johansson Hates Blake Lively." Psychology Today explains "Why We Hate Airport Security." Dick Meyer, formerly of NPR and now executive producer for news services at BBC America, wrote a provocative book called Why We Hate Us.

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