Occidental College
Global Affairs
Erik Eckholm
Journalist, New York Times
Erik Eckholm has held a variety of reporting and editing positions at The New York Times, including, most recently, five years as Beijing bureau chief. After graduating from Occidental in 1971, where he majored in political science, he received an M.A. in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.
He spent several years with non-governmental groups doing research and writing on environment and third world development issues and wrote three books on related subjects: Losing Ground (1976), The Picture of Health (1977) and Down to Earth (1982).
He served on the policy planning staff of the State Department in 1979 and 1980. From 1982 to 1984 he was managing editor of Natural History magazine in New York. He joined The New York Times in 1985 as a reporter on environmental and medical issues in 1985 and over time has been the paper’s science and health editor, editor of the week in review and deputy foreign editor. He was Beijing bureau chief from 1998 to 2003. In 2003-2004, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and in the summer of 2004 he began reporting for the Times on Iraqi reconstruction.
- Phone: (323) 259-2681
- Email: mmacaskill@oxy.edu