Jonathan Capehart entered journalism without a blueprint. No one in his family worked in news, so he built his own way in by saying his ambition out loud. The lesson became his mantra: “When someone asks you what you want, tell them!”
Capehart co-hosts The Weekend on MS NOW, analyzes politics on PBS NewsHour’s “Brooks and Capehart,” and is the New York Times bestselling author of Yet Here I Am: Lessons From a Black Man’s Search for Home. Before television made him a familiar presence, he spent 18 years as a Washington Post opinion writer. In 1999, Capehart shared the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for the New York Daily News editorial board’s campaign to save Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Now a three-time Out100 honoree, Capehart says his role requires more than recounting events. He must also tell viewers what he thinks about them, even as press freedom faces “unrelenting pressure from within and outside the industry.”
Capehart sees a path through today’s dangers in the courage of Stonewall rebels, ACT UP demonstrators, couples who demanded marriage equality, and transgender activists still fighting. “Their example and their sacrifices,” he says, “provide us the road map to a just future." @capehartj
