Jack Hitt

Jack Hitt is an American author. He is a contributing editor to The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and This American Life. He served previously as a contributing editor to the now-defunct magazine Lingua Franca. He also frequently appears in places like Rolling Stone, Wired, and Outside Magazine. In 1990, he received the Livingston Award for national coverage. More recently, a piece on the anthropology of white Indians was selected for "Best American Science Writing," and another piece about dying languages appeared in "Best American Travel Writing." Another piece on the existential life of a superfund site was included in 2007 in Ira Glass’s “The New Kings of Nonfiction." Hitt was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where he attended the Porter-Gaud School. He got his start in journalism as editor of the "Paper Clip," the literary magazine of Porter-Gaud's first through fifth grades. According to his biography, he published "some of the finest haiku penned by well-off pre-teens in all of South Carolina's lowcountry". "Pro-Life Nation,"^[1] a piece written by Hitt and featured in the New York Times Magazine on April 9, 2006, was criticized on December 31, 2006 ^[2], by the New York Times public editor, Byron Calame, who concluded that the article contained an anecdote that was not accurate. Hitt had reported that Carmen Climaco had received a 30-year jail sentence for having an abortion, but in fact the court concluded that Ms Climaco had strangled her full-term baby after it was delivered, and sentenced her for homicide. An "editor's note" published on January 7, 2007 said that the article had been based on a trial judge's account "that she believed that Ms. Climaco had an abortion when she was 18 weeks pregnant, and that she regretted allowing the case to be tried as a homicide"; a later three-judge panel, however, had overturned that finding. Since 1996, Hitt has also been a contributing editor to This American Life. In particular, he contributed the story about the worst theater performance ever—about a production of Peter Pan in an episode entitled “Fiasco.” His other notable pieces include his life growing up with one of the earliest transgendered women (“Dawn”), an hour long program on a group of prisoners in a maximum security prison putting on a production of Hamlet (“Act V”), another episode about his life in a New York apartment building in which his superintendent turned out to be the head of a death squad in Brazil (“superintendent” and more recently a segment on the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay called “Habeas Schmabeas.” This last program earned him the Peabody Award in 2007.

Books

• Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain (1994)
• In a Word: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist, But Ought To (1992) ISBN 0-440-50358-2
• The Harper’s Forum Book (editor, 1991)
• Perfect Murder: Five Great Mystery Writers Create the Perfect Crime (editor, 1991)

Radio

Jack Hitt's work can be heard on the following episodes of This American Life:

• 1996: 15, 19, 38
• 1997: 56, 61, 65, 68, 85
• 1998: 100, 110, 115
• 1999: 120, 123, 145
• 2000: 171
• 2001: none
• 2002: 216, 218
• 2003: 229, 250, 252, 253
• 2004: 262, 276, 278
• 2005: 280, 283
• 2006: 310
• 2007: 323, 331

External links

• This American Life staff

References