Steve Adler
Editor-in-Chief, BusinessWeek

Steve Adler became editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek on April 1, 2005.

Mr. Adler began his journalistic career as a reporter for the Tampa Times and the Tallahassee Democrat. In 1983, he joined The American Lawyer and later became editor of the magazine and editorial director of the American Lawyer Newspapers group, a chain of local dailies and weeklies.

In 1988, Mr. Adler joined the Wall Street Journal as legal editor. He was appointed to the Journal’s page-one staff as special projects editor in 1994, and was named deputy page-one editor in 1997. Between 1995 and 1999, he directed reporting teams that won three Pulitzer Prizes, for articles on the tobacco industry (1995), the new AIDS treatments (1996), and military spending (1999).

Mr. Adler became assistant managing editor of the Wall Street Journal in 1998; in this role, he supervised investigative coverage, taught journalism ethics and standards to Dow Jones news employees worldwide, and assisted the managing editor in a variety of news and administrative assignments. In 2000, Mr. Adler was named deputy managing editor. His responsibilities included helping direct news coverage of the daily paper, extending the reach of the Wall Street Journal on the Internet and in other media, and overseeing the Wall Street Journal Books imprint.

Mr. Adler’s book, The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom, was published by Times Books in 1994 and won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award in 1995. With his wife, novelist Lisa Grunwald, he was co-editor of Letters of the Century, published by Dial Press in 1999, and of Women’s Letters, published by Dial in 2005.

In 1985, Mr. Adler was named a National Magazine Award finalist for his American Lawyer article on the Union Carbide accident in Bhopal. In 1993, he and a Wall Street Journal colleague received an award of merit in the John Peter Zenger Media Awards Competition for their article “Common Criminals.” He is the 2008 winner of the Benjamin Rush Award from Dickinson College.

Born in New York City, Mr. Adler received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1977 and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1983.

Mr. Adler is a member of the board of directors of the Goddard Riverside Community Center, one of New York’s original settlement houses. He is also a member of the Board of Advisers of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism. He and his wife have a daughter and a son and live in New York City.