Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, reporter, columnist, radio host and television producer and analyst. He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers: “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies”(2013), “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (2010) and “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (2006). Since 1996, Alter has been an analyst and contributing correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC.

In his documentary debut, Alter joined John Block for 'Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists,' an HBO film. The story follows two swashbuckling newspaper columnists who spoke for ordinary people and brought passion, wit and literary merit to their brilliant reporting about their city and nation.

Interviewees include Tom Wolfe, Robert De Niro, Spike Lee, and Shirley MacLaine, among others. It captures the charm of the old New York, while probing explosive issues of race, class and the practice of journalism that resonate powerfully in our own time.

In this interview, Alter discusses the “wonderful chaos” of documentary filmmaking, what the national news taught him about story compression, the difference between important stories and interesting stories, what he has learned from interviewing eight American presidents, and how growth as a writer may not be linear.

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