Peter Wallsten

Peter Wallsten is an American journalist and author who is currently an accountability and enterprise editor at The New York Times. He was previously a White House correspondent.

Early life and education

Wallsten was brought up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1994.

Career

Wallsten started his career writing for the Miami Herald, St. Petersburg Times, Charlotte Observer and the Congressional Quarterly.
He became a White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in 2004, and authored, with Tom Hamburger, One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century.
Wallsten joined The Wall Street Journal in 2009 as a national political reporter before moving to the Post to become a White House correspondent in 2010. He was appointed a senior politics editor in 2013.
In 2025, Wallsten joined The New York Times as an editor in its Washington bureau.

Personal life

Wallsten is partially blind as a result of Stargardt disease, which is a genetically inherited form of macular degeneration. In June 2006, this caused an exchange of words with President George W. Bush at a White House press conference. Unaware of the journalist's medical condition, the president questioned Wallsten's need to wear sunglasses when the sun wasn't visible. Bush later apologized for the incident.