David Hajdu


David Hajdu is an American columnist, author and professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was the music critic for The New Republic for 12 years and is music editor at The Nation.

Biography

Of Hungarian and Italian descent, Hajdu was born and raised in Phillipsburg, New Jersey and attended New York University, where he majored in journalism.
His first professional work was illustrating for The Easton Express in 1972. He started writing for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone in 1979, and was the founding editor of Video Review magazine, where he worked from 1980 to 1984. In the late 1980s he began teaching at The New School, and was an editor at Entertainment Weekly from 1990 to 1999. He was the music critic for The New Republic for 12 years and is music editor at The Nation.
He has taught at the University of Chicago, Syracuse University, and Columbia University, where he is a professor of journalism.
He has written biographies and other nonfiction about the musicians Billy Strayhorn, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina. He has also written about comic books.

Awards