As a freelance editor, Michael Judge has helped place pieces by CEOs and whistleblowers, artists and activists, educators and academics, journalists and poets, attorneys and clergy, philosophers and politicians, foreign-policy experts and military personnel, scientists and healthcare professionals, and ordinary folks with something extraordinary to say in outlets as varied as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, The Atlantic, The New York Post, Newsweek, Foreign Policy, CEO magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Orlando Sentinel, The Dallas Morning News, The American Conservative, and Essence magazine.

A longtime WSJ editor and writer, Judge is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In his nearly two decades with the Journal (1997-2017), he commissioned and edited op-eds on a daily basis and edited the weekly Cross Country and Manager’s Journal columns. He also wrote numerous op-eds in addition to interviews, essays and reviews for the Weekend Journal, Taste, and Leisure & Arts pages.

In addition to the Journal, his own work—including commentary, essays, reviews, features, and poetry—has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, Politico, NPR, Smithsonian magazine, The Dallas Morning News, The Chicago Tribune, The Des Moines Register, The Japan Times, The Wire (India), The Far Eastern Economic Review, The Literary Review, The Iowa Review, and Poet Lore, among other publications.

In February 2022, Judge launched The First Person with Michael Judge, a weekly Substack newsletter with thousands of readers across 50 states and 72 countries. In today’s hyperpolarized political and media environment, meaningful conversations are, sadly, few and far between. With TFP, Judge shares his and others’ essays and has in-depth talks with his guests, exchanging ideas, stories and common experiences that, hopefully, bring us all a little closer.

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