Joseph Albright

Joseph Medill Patterson Albright (né Reeve; born April 3, 1937) is an American retired journalist and author. A descendant of the Medill-Patterson media family, Albright wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times before becoming a reporter and executive at Newsday. He was later Washington and foreign correspondent for Cox Newspapers, receiving several journalism awards and nominations. Albright has authored three books; two with his wife, fellow reporter Marcia Kunstel. He was formerly married to Madeleine Korbel Albright, who later became the first female U. S. Secretary of State. Early life Albright was born Joseph Medill Patterson Reeve in New Orleans on April 3, 1937, to lawyer Jay Frederick "Fred" Reeve and his wife Josephine Medill Patterson, a reporter and airplane pilot. His younger sister Alice became a screenwriter. His parents divorced in 1944, and in 1946 Josephine married the painter Ivan Le Lorraine Albright. Ivan Albright adopted Joseph and Alice, who took his surname, and with Josephine had two more children, Adam and Blandina ("Dina"). Josephine chronicled young Joseph in a weekly Newsday column, "Life with Junior". He attended Groton School, Massachusetts, before studying at Williams College. Albright is a scion of a newspaper empire: his grandfather and namesake Joseph Medill Patterson founded the New York Daily News, and his grand-aunt Eleanor "Cissy" Patterson edited the Washington Times-Herald. His great-great-grandfather, Joseph Medill, owned the Chicago Tribune and served as mayor of Chicago. Albright's aunt Alicia Patterson was founder and publisher of Newsday, and without children of her own, gave special attention to Joseph and Alice, expressing hope that one of them would succeed her as publisher when she retired. Career Albright graduated from Williams College in 1958. During the summers of 1956 and 1957 he interned at the Denver Post, where he met fellow intern Madeleine Jana Korbel, whom he married on June 11, 1959. They had three daughters: twins Anne and Alice (born 1961) and Katie (born 1967), before divorcing in 1983. He worked at the Chicago Sun-Times from 1958 to 1961 before joining Newsday in 1961. In 1963, after the death of his aunt Alicia, he became aide to the president and publisher, his uncle Harry F. Guggenheim. He worked in New York and later became chief of the Washington, D.C. bureau. He resigned from Newsday in early 1971, and worked as a legislative aide to Maine Senator Edmund Muskie from 1971 to 1972.