A Foreign Correspondent Takes Over a Washington Think Tank

Steve Coll’s introduction to the button-down world of the think tank was tinged with a bit of glamour. Mr. Coll,

a well-traveled journalist, won his second Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. After the Pulitzer, Mr. Coll’s grasp of history and elegant writing style landed him arguably the most coveted of assignments: staff writer at The New Yorker, where he has produced articles on international politics for the past two years.

So it may have been only fitting that he heard he was being considered for the presidency of a nonpartisan think tank made up largely of journalists and policy experts — the nine-year-old New America Foundation, in Washington — while enjoying a glass of wine at midnight with a terrorism expert at an Italian streetside cafe.

Peter Bergen, the terrorism expert, and a senior fellow at New America, “asked me to think about this out of the blue,” says Mr. Coll. “It’s something I hadn’t even remotely thought about.”

Mr. Coll, who turned 49 this month, will continue in his position at The New Yorker while he leads the think tank.

He comes to the New America Foundation at a time when the organization — whose fellows study and write on issues including economic growth, education, the environment, foreign policy, and the political system — is gaining more influence over the news media and policy makers. That’s particularly true in California, where its work on health care influenced Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who incorporated the organization’s ideas into his own proposals. (In addition to its Washington headquarters, New America keeps satellite offices in Los Angeles, where Mr. Coll grew up and attended college, and in Sacramento.)

One of Mr. Coll’s tasks, he says, will be to help New America reach beyond the typical newspaper opinion pages to new-media outlets where the organization’s thinkers can broadcast their views, or see them on screen.

Mr. Coll, who will earn $250,000 a year on the job, will also be expected to raise money. Supported by grant makers — including the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, both in New York, and the James Irvine Foundation, in San Francisco — individuals, and a handful of corporations, New America runs on a $10-million budget and a staff of nearly 100 people. Mr. Coll says he hopes to develop an endowment. “I hope to build that up over time, realistically and gradually,” he says.

Although one published report noted some concern among New America staff members because no one from inside the organization was considered for the top spot, James Fallows, the organization’s board chairman, says Mr. Coll was the correct hire.

“We considered people from a wide variety of backgrounds, including some with more straightforward fund-raising experience,” says Mr. Fallows, national editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Coll is among the top ranks of reporters, Mr. Fallows adds, “but he also had very significant experience as a leader and manager at The Washington Post,” where he spent 20 years, including a stint as managing editor. “People with that much individual creative achievement don’t usually have that much managerial experience,” Mr. Fallows says. “We felt he had the energy, stature, and intellect to make New America even stronger.”

Mr. Coll is replacing the group’s founding president, Ted Halstead, who left to oversee a real-estate-development effort in Costa Rica.

In an interview, Mr. Coll discussed his new role:

Why did you want to take on the top job at a think tank?

It was unexpected, but I became drawn to it and eventually very excited about it for several reasons.

One is the time we’re in. The country is going to undergo a lot of important change in the next five to 10 years. People are looking for solutions that don’t come exclusively from one ideology or other. The collaborative aspect of the job is another reason. I love to do work as an independent researcher and writer and hope to continue that, but a couple of years out from the Post, I found I missed a collaborative atmosphere and the energy that comes from being around smart people from whom you can learn and occasionally can help.

How hard will it be for your organization to get attention at time of such sharp political divisions in America?

I’ve been impressed that New America has been able to hold its ground even as the politicization has intensified. It’s important for me to figure out how the organization has been able to do that. The worst of that era of politicization is probably over.

My guess is that in November 2008 there will be a gathering of faith, thought, and promise during this political season that will provide a more solutions-oriented agenda that’s not fully shrouded in the partisan noise we hear so much today. It’s already happening. New America’s programs in education, health care, asset building, and elsewhere represent a synthesis of orthodoxies and the creation of something new out of them.

Can you define “nonpartisan”?

It’s literally a challenge to be that way. It means you don’t respond to a party’s needs. It means balance and truly interpreting your commitment to the unorthodox. To some extent, though, it’s about the work itself and whether the ideas and journalism that flow out of New America proceed from a blank slate.

It shouldn’t attempt to prove views that are already held, but instead establish new paths, new solutions, and new interpretations.

How is the role of think tanks changing as newspapers are changing?

As we move into a different era of media and licensing, we need to figure out what we can do. New America’s well positioned to try, first off, because of its California connections and, secondly, our relatively young and unencumbered history.

We’ll try to do several things simultaneously. First, we’ll drop the idea that the role of think tanks in the marketplace of ideas is primarily to disseminate. New technology, and its three-dimensional shape, allows for a different way to generate and disseminate ideas. What are the aspects of this revolution?

One, the obliteration of physical space, and two, the deepening of intense communities of like-minded people. A think tank should be able to take advantage of those characteristics to create communities and to use those communities to develop, disseminate, and refine those ideas, and do it without the burden of a bottom line.

You’ll be keeping your job at The New Yorker. Is that to hedge your bets?

Not at all. It’s my way of having it all. I love The New Yorker — it’s a great place to work. Quite a few of the writers there have come from institutions outside of journalism, so I don’t worry about any conflict. I feel confident, looking at examples like Walter Isaacson [president of the Aspen Institute, in Washington] and the kinds of work done by fellows at New America, that the foundation will be a place associated with the work of truly independent journalists. I’m just going to be one of them.