Walter Shapiro, the Washington bureau chief for Salon.com since 2006, has covered the last eight presidential campaigns as a columnist and reporter. For nearly ten years ending in 2004, he wrote a twice weekly political column for USA TODAY. He is the author of "One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In," a chronicle of the early skirmishing for the presidential nomination, published in November 2003. BUSINESS WEEK called the book “witty and insightful.”
 

Shapiro spent the first four years of the Clinton administration writing a monthly column (“Our Man in the White House”) for ESQUIRE. From 1987-93, he was a senior writer for TIME and was also the magazine’s correspondent covering the 1992 Clinton campaign. At NEWSWEEK (1983-87), he was the lead political writer. He was on the reporting staff of the WASHINGTON POST from 1979-83. Prior to joining the POST, he served as a White House speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and a special assistant and speechwriter for Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall.
        

His first major job in journalism was as an editor of the WASHINGTON MONTHLY (1972-76). In 1972, Shapiro ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. House seat from Michigan. He received a B.A. degree (1970) from the University of Michigan where he also did graduate work in European history.

Shapiro was a 2005 fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s  Kennedy School of Government. He also spent five months in Japan (1991-92) on a fellowship from the Japan Society. He is a regular speaker and guest lecturer on college campuses, having appeared in the last year at Yale University, Stanford University, Columbia University, the University of Virginia, American University, St. Anselm University and the Midwest Political Science Association. Since 1995, Shapiro has also performed standup comedy at leading New York City clubs. The TIMES (of London) called him “one of Manhattan’s leading political satirists.”