Elisabeth Bumiller is Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, a position she has held since September 2015. She oversees daily operations and leads all news coverage from Washington for The Times. Previously, she held the position of Washington editor and before that, deputy Washington bureau chief, overseeing White House and domestic policy reporting. She covered the Pentagon, John McCain’s 2008 campaign and, from 2001 to 2006, she was a White House correspondent.

Before moving to Washington, Bumiller was the Times’ City Hall bureau chief, responsible for covering Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and his Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton from 1999 to 2001. Before that, Bumiller worked on the Times’s Metropolitan staff in New York as a general assignment reporter and as one of the writers of the Public Lives column. She has also written for The New York Times Magazine and the Culture and Travel pages. From 1979 to 1985, Bumiller worked for The Washington Post in Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo and New York. Her first job in journalism was in the Naples bureau of The Miami Herald.

She is the author of three books: “Condoleezza Rice: An American Life”; “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India”; and “The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family.”

Kathy Gest, chair of NPF’s board of directors, said: “This year’s Chairman’s Citation goes to Elisabeth Bumiller, Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, who has led the paper’s Washington coverage during a period of increasing challenges for journalism. Despite frequent jabs from the president of the United States at both the paper and individual staff members, the Times’ talented Washington bureau staff, under Bumiller’s leadership, has generated insightful and courageous coverage of the function and dysfunction of government. Since Donald Trump’s arrival in Washington, the bureau has produced story after leading-edge story detailing the investigations, charges, shakeups and general disorder that have characterized the new administration. Bumiller has been in the center of it all in what Times’ editor Dean Baquet has described as ‘the newsiest place at the New York Times.’ ”

2018 Chairman’s Citation
Elisabeth Bumiller / The New York Times