23 Facts About Gene Weingarten

Gene Norman Weingarten is an American journalist, and former syndicated humor columnist for The Washington Post.

Gene Weingarten is the only two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.

Gene Weingarten grew up in the southwest Bronx, the son of an accountant who worked as an Internal Revenue Service agent and a schoolteacher.

In 1968, Gene Weingarten graduated from The Bronx High School of Science and attended New York University, where he started as a pre-med student but ended up majoring in psychology.

Gene Weingarten was editor of the NYU daily student newspaper, The Heights Daily News.

Gene Weingarten then moved back to New York City to work at The National Law Journal.

Gene Weingarten wrote "Below the Beltway," a weekly humor column for The Washington Post that was nationally syndicated.

Gene Weingarten created and, until 2003, edited The Style Invitational humor contest for The Washington Post.

Gene Weingarten's column continued under a contract with The Post, but he stopped contributing feature-length articles.

However, Gene Weingarten announced via Twitter on December 8,2021, that he and the Post could not come to terms on a new contract, and he was no longer writing for them.

Gene Weingarten was diagnosed with what was then a near-fatal infection of Hepatitis C, which led to the publication his first book, 1998's The Hypochondriac's Guide To Life.

Gene Weingarten co-wrote a series of humor columns in The Washington Post with feminist writer Gina Barreca about the differences between men and women.

In fall of 2008, Weingarten published Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs in collaboration with photographer Michael S Williamson.

In October 2019 Gene Weingarten published One Day, an exhaustive look into a random day in American history.

In January 2023, Gene Weingarten resumed his chat on the Substack publishing website, now entitled "The Gene Weingarten Pool".

Gene Weingarten has written three screenplays, one in collaboration with humorist Dave Barry and two in collaboration with David Simon, including B Major, about a piano marathon conducted in Scranton in 1970.

From 1987 to 1988, Gene Weingarten was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

In 2006, Gene Weingarten won the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Award for Multicultural Journalism for his Washington Post Magazine feature article Snowbound.

The article, entitled "Famous Fiddler in Disguise Gets $5.61 in Curb Concerts," showed commuters displaying the same disinterest as Gene Weingarten described in his article.

In 2014, Gene Weingarten was awarded the National Society of Newspaper Columnists' Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gene Weingarten has lived in many places on the East Coast.

Gene Weingarten has since made several references to a girlfriend in online chats, and at least one column, and in his chat of June 2,2019, revealed that his girlfriend was Rachel Manteuffel, a 36-year-old editor and fellow writer for The Washington Post.

Gene Weingarten has two children, Molly Weingarten, a veterinarian, and Dan Weingarten, a cartoonist.