Ep. 49 – Mark Whitaker on Smoketown: Black Pittsburgh’s Forgotten Renaissance

Mark Whitaker spent three decades as a reporter, writer and editor for Newsweek Magazine and in 1999 became the first African-American to lead a national newsweekly. In 2007, he joined NBC News and the following year replaced the late Tim Russert as Washington Bureau Chief. In 2011, Mark was appointed Managing Editor of CNN Worldwide, […]

Mark Whitaker spent three decades as a reporter, writer and editor for Newsweek Magazine and in 1999 became the first African-American to lead a national newsweekly. In 2007, he joined NBC News and the following year replaced the late Tim Russert as Washington Bureau Chief. In 2011, Mark was appointed Managing Editor of CNN Worldwide, overseeing day-to-day news coverage across all television and digital platforms as well as the original programming team that created CNN Films and acquired Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown.”

In 2011, Mark published “My Long Trip Home,” the story of his turbulent upbringing in a broken interracial home. Widely acclaimed, the memoir was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. Mark’s latest book, “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance,” chronicles the remarkable cultural and political legacy of black Pittsburgh, where Mark’s father grew up and his grandparents ran funeral homes. Barnes & Noble selected “Smoketown” as a featured book for Black History Month 2018, and—in a starred review—Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “an expansive, prodigiously researched, and masterfully told history.”