Bio
Richard L. Berke
Richard L. Berke is assistant managing editor for news at The Times.
Mr. Berke started at The Times as the night editor in the Washington Bureau 23 years ago. He was the national political correspondent for more than a decade, and as a reporter covered the 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2000 campaigns. He also covered Congress, the White House and domestic policy. In 2002, he became Washington Editor, and , at the start of 2005, moved to New York to be an associate managing editor, and then assumed his current position.
Before joining The Times, he was a reporter for several years at The Baltimore Evening Sun and also worked at The Minneapolis Tribune and The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. He graduated from the University of Michigan and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Helene Cooper
Helene Cooper is a White House correspondent with The New York Times. Prior to this assignment, she was The Times's diplomatic correspondent. She joined the newspaper in 2004 as the assistant editorial page editor, a position she held for two years before she ran out of opinions and returned to news. She has reported from 64 countries, from Pakistan to the Congo.
Previously, Helene worked for 12 years at the Wall Street Journal, where she was a foreign correspondent, reporter and editor, working in the London, Washington and Atlanta bureaus. She is the winner of the Raymond Clapper award for Washington reporting (2000), the Sandy Hume award for best reporter under the age of 35 (2001), the Missouri Lifestyle award for feature writing (2002), a National Association of Black Journalists award for feature writing (2004), and the Urbino Press Award for foreign reporting (2011).
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Helene is the author of The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (Simon and Schuster), a New York Times best seller and a National Books Critics Circle finalist in autobiography in 2009. In 2009 and 2010, she appeared on the TV quiz show, Jeopardy!, as a clue. She has also appeared on Meet the Press, Washington Week, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Chris Matthews Show and This Week.
Jim Rutenberg
After attending New York University, Jim Rutenberg joined the New York Daily News in 1993 as a gossip stringer, later becoming a general assignment reporter. He was hired on staff in 1996 and became a transit beat reporter a year later. In 1999, Jim left the Daily News to go to the New York Observer, where he worked as a TV reporter. In 2000, Jim moved over to The New York Times, where he now is a national correspondent.
Jeff Zeleny
Jeff Zeleny is a political correspondent for The New York Times. Previously, he covered President Obama and the administration. He has traveled with Mr. Obama across the United States and the world, including reporting from Cairo in June 2009, when the president delivered his first major address to the Muslim world.
Zeleny covered the 2008 presidential campaign, following Mr. Obama from the day of his announcement through his primary fight with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and into the general election with Senator John McCain. Before the presidential race began, he covered Congress for the newspaper.
Prior to joining The New York Times in September 2006, he was a national political correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. where he covered the 2004 presidential campaign, and the first years of the George W. Bush administration.
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
- electoral system
Method and rules of counting votes to determine the outcome of elections. Winners may be determined by a plurality, a majority (more than 50% of the vote), an extraordinary majority (a percentage of the vote greater than 50%), or unanimity. Candidates for public office may be elected directly or indirectly. Proportional representation is used in some areas to ensure a fairer distribution of legislative seats to constituencies that may be denied representation under the plurality or majority formulas. See also party system, plurality system, primary election.
- electoral system on britannica.com
© 2010 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
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