Jeff Zeleny, the national political correspondent for the New York Times, delivered the commencement address at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln baccalaureate ceremony December 15, 2012.

Zeleny, a 1996 journalism and political science graduate of UNL, was the Times' lead reporter on the 2012 presidential campaign, his fourth presidential race. He also covered President Obama's election in 2008 and a was White House correspondent during the opening years of Obama's first term. He joined the Washington Bureau of the Times in September 2006 as a Congressional correspondent.

He previously spent six years at the Chicago Tribune, covering the George W. Bush administration and his re-election. Zeleny also chronicled Obama's early years in Washington as a U.S. senator and produced the first draft of the history of his rise, traveling to Russia and Africa with him. He also was a member of the Tribune's reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism in 2001 for documenting gridlock in the nation's air traffic system.

Zeleny began his newspaper career at the Des Moines Register and also worked for the Associated Press and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the Florida Times Union and the Lincoln Journal Star. He has reported from all 50 states and his work has taken him to more than three dozen countries. A native of Exeter, he lives in Washington, where he appears regularly on Washington Week on PBS, Fox News Sunday and a variety of television news programs.

свернуть