BIOGRAPHY

Larry Tye runs the new Health Coverage Fellowship, which is designed to help the media do a better job covering critical health care issues. Each year it provides nine days of intensive training - along with 11 months of ongoing tutelage - to 10 medical journalists from newspapers, radio stations and TV outlets. The program is sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts, with help from the Maine Health Access Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation, Jane’s Trust, New Hampshire’s Endowment for Health, Vermont Community Foundation, Ottauquechee Health Foundation in Vermont, and other philanthropies. For its first two years, eligibility was limited to journalists from newspapers, radio stations and TV outlets in Massachusetts; in 2004 the fellowship expanded to include reporters and editors from New Hampshire and Maine, in 2005 it added Vermont and Connecticut, and next spring it will include all six New England states along with one national reporter.

From 1986 to 2001, Tye was a reporter at the Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe's environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. He wrote series on how 30 years of socialism devastated Eastern Europe's environment, the erosion of personal privacy in today's high-tech society, why Pentecostalism is the world's fastest-growing religion, and the mixed legacy of California's experiment with market-driven medicine.

Tye has won a series of national reporting awards, including the Edward J. Meeman environmental prize, the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, and the National Wildlife Federation's Conservation Achievement Award. He also won awards from the Associated Press, AP Sports Editors, Sigma Delta Chi, the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

Tye's first book, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations, was published in 1998 by Crown. After four hardcover printings, the paperback was issued by Henry Holt in 2001. Spin has been reviewed in dozens of newspapers across America, from the New York Times (twice) to the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. It was the subject of reports on CNN, CSPAN's "Book Notes," two shows on National Public Radio, and a multi-part BBC series on Bernays and his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

His second book, Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora, was published by Holt in 2001. It looks at the renewal underway across the Jewish world, from Boston to Buenos Aires, Dusseldorf to Dnepropetrovsk deep in the Ukraine. In each community children are leading parents and grandparents back to their culture and faith, and in each Jews feel confident living in diverse societies while still embracing a core of beliefs and practices that define them as Jews.

Tye, who lives in Cambridge, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94.

He came to the Globe from the LouisvilleCourier-Journal, a paper that - until its sale 18 years ago by the Bingham family - was a national leader in opposing strip mining and pushing for pollution controls. Tye was the Courier-Journal's environmental writer. His projects in Louisville included an award-winning 60-page magazine, called " America's Shame," which analyzed the Reagan administration's record in battling pollution. Another 60-pager looked at newly-uncovered indoor pollutants and told readers how to get rid of them.

Tye's first brush with journalism came in 1980 and was "accidental": He wanted to see the South before heading back to his native New England, and a newspaper seemed like a good way to do that. He ended up at the Anniston Star, a small, progressive paper in the heart of Alabama that George Wallace dubbed "The Red Star.'" His beats included business and government, his stories ranged from a look back at the Freedom Riders to a look ahead at Alabama's dim economic prospects, and his stay in Anniston lasted two years rather than the six months he had planned.

Tye graduated from Brown University in 1977 with an independent concentration entitled, "Technology and Society, Defining a New Balance."

After college, Tye went to work for the Union of Concerned Scientists in its new Washington office, where he authored reports on nuclear power plant safety that inspired an NBC documentary and a report on "60 Minutes." Two years later he took a job in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Washington office, writing and lobbying on energy, environmental and consumer issues, and reporting to Lt. Gov. Thomas P. O'Neill III.

Tye’s newest book, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class, was released in 2004 by Henry Holt. It explores the 100-year history of the black men who worked on George Pullman’s railroad sleeping cars, looking at how they launched the first successful black trade union, helped kick-start the Civil Rights movement, and gave birth to today's African-American middle class.

Tye is now collaborating with Kitty Dukakis on a book on electro-convulsive therapy. It is half her first-person experience with the treatment, half his look at its history, science and medicine, and is due out next fall from Avery/Penguin.