Brad Knickerbocker

Staff writer and editor

Brad Knickerbocker grew up in upstate New York, got a BA in English literature at Hobart College in Geneva, NY, then spent the next six years as a US Navy “tailhooker” flying A-4 Skyhawk jets from aircraft carriers (including a combat tour in Vietnam). Brad and his wife Carol then spent most of the next year traveling around Europe in a VW van, during which time Brad discovered he was a news junkie.

Back in the United States, Brad got his first newspaper job in Rochester, NY, where he covered everything from dog shows to the Attica Prison riot.

Brad joined the Monitor in 1972, covering Boston City Hall, where he learned everything he’s ever needed to know about politics. Since then, he’s been the San Francisco bureau chief, Washington bureau news manager and Pentagon correspondent, National News Editor, and Chief Editorial Writer.

Brad’s greatest journalistic adventure (so far) was helping fly a small, single-engine Cessna 182 from Namibia in southern Africa to Fairbanks, Alaska, reporting the trip in print and online as the “Small Plane, Big Planet” series.

For fun, he rides road and mountain bikes, cross-country skis and snow-shoes, hikes the mountains of southern Oregon, plays with those irrepressible Welsh corgi brothers Dodger and Dylan, and abuses a banjo.

Brad and Carol live in Ashland, Oregon (home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival), spending as much time as possible with their grandson Rowan.