Jeffrey Bartholet became Newsweek's Washington bureau chief in July 2006. Prior to that, he served for more than four years as Newsweek's foreign editor, directing and editing coverage of Al Qaeda, the Afghan war, and the war in Iraq. Newsweek won several prizes for international news coverage during this period, including the 2004 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. "Newsweek offered fact and context to help guide readers through the glut of unfolding news on the war in Iraq," said the award citation.

Bartholet previously served as a senior writer in New York--crafting, among other stories, Newsweek profiles of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar--and as bureau chief in Tokyo (1996-1998), Jerusalem (1993-1996), and Nairobi (1989-1993). He has written cover stories for Newsweek and Newsweek International on a wide range of subjects, including AIDS in Africa, conflict and peacemaking in Jerusalem, and baseball in Japan. "The Darkest Corner of the Internet" (co-authored with Rod Nordland), about the spread of child pornography, won a SAIS-Novartis Prize for Excellence in International Journalism.

As a correspondent, Bartholet traveled to more than 40 countries and territories. He covered Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the Liberian civil war, famine and conflict in Somalia, the Palestinian uprisings, the Oslo Accords, and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Dressed as an Afghan, Bartholet rode with triumphant mujahideen when they took over Kabul in 1992. He visited Timbuktu, camped in the Ngorongoro Crater, and slept under his bed during the 1989 shelling of Beirut.

In 1998, Bartholet received a Freedom Forum fellowship to teach journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In the fall of 2004, he was a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton.

Bartholet's continuing education includes a graduate degree in Middle East studies and a diploma in Arabic language studies from American University in Cairo, a B.A. in philosophy and political science from the University of Vermont, and a semester abroad at Birzeit University on the Israeli-occupied West Bank.