Michael Tomasky
American journalist (born 1960)

Michael John Tomasky (born October 13, 1960) is an American columnist, progressive commentator, and author. He is the editor of The New Republic and the editor in chief of Democracy. He has been a special correspondent for Newsweek, The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.
Life and career
Tomasky was born and raised in Morgantown, West Virginia, the son of Maria (Aluisi) and Michael Tomasky, a trial attorney. He is of Serbian and Italian descent. He is a graduate of Morgantown High School. He attended West Virginia University as an undergraduate and then studied political science in graduate school at New York University. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Harper's Weekly, The Nation, The Village Voice, The New York Review of Books, Dissent, Lingua Franca, George, and GQ. He lives with his wife Sarah and daughter (Margot Julianna Kerr Tomasky, born July 6, 2010) in Silver Spring, Maryland.
From 1995 to 2002, Tomasky was a columnist at New York magazine, where he wrote the "City Politic" column. He was executive editor of liberal magazine The American Prospect, and remains a contributing editor.
The public source identifies “Michael Tomasky” as american journalist (born 1960). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Michael, Tomasky and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6834914. VIAF identifies the subject as 36174322. The Library of Congress control number is n96007131. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2010, 1995 and 2002.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Tomasky” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.