Robert Novak

About Robert Novak

Robert David Sanders "Bob" Novak (born February 26, 1931) is a conservative American political commentator and journalist who writes the longest-running current U.S. syndicated political column (45 years, as of February 2008). Over his 45 year career, Bob Novak has become well-known as a columnist (writing Inside Report since 1963) and as a television personality (appearing on many shows for CNN, most notably on three former programs, The Capital Gang, Crossfire, and Evans, Novak, Hunt, and Shields). His memoirs, entitled Prince of Darkness: Fifty Years Reporting in Washington, were published in July 2007 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House. "Prince of Darkness" was a nickname given to Novak by his friend, the reporter John Lindsay, "because [Lindsay] thought for a young man I took a very dim view of the prospects for our civilization." Novak said in an interview.

Novak was born into a Jewish family in Joliet, Illinois. His journalism career began when he was still a high school student, as a writer for the Joliet Herald-News, his hometown newspaper.

After high school, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (U of I) from 1948-1952. While attending U of I, he became a brother of Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity. He continued gaining journalism experience as a sports writer for the Daily Illini, the student newspaper at U of I. However, his disappointment at not being named Sports Editor his senior year caused him to quit the DI and go to work for the local community newspaper, The Champaign-Urbana Courier, where he was also a sportswriter. After four years at U of I, Novak was one course short of graduating, and when he left the university to become a full-time journalist, he did so without a degree. (Some forty years later, the University of Illinois saw fit to award Novak sufficient credits from his career in journalism to qualify him for a degree, and he finally became an Illinois alumnus.)