Susan Crabtree

Susan Crabtree was the Washington correspondent for Variety until October 2004, where she writes daily and weekly stories about the nexus between politics and the entertainment industry. Recently issues she's covered include the Federal Communications Commission and the controversy over its new media ownership rules, copyright, movie and music piracy issues, and political fundraising in Hollywood. Crabtree previously spent three years as a reporter for Roll Call newspaper, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, where she covered the House Republican leadership and chronicled Congress' response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the anthrax scares, internal political leadership struggles and campaign finance. She has written for several magazines, including the Weekly Standard, Salon.com and Capital Style, where she received a National Press Club award for her story, "The Producers: An Inside Story You'll Never See on TV," a look at the behind-the-scenes' role of network producers covering the Clinton scandals. More recently, Crabtree served as a guest speaker for incoming 2002 freshmen members of Congress at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics, and has appeared as a commentator on numerous TV and radio shows. She graduated with honors in journalism and political science from the University of Southern California.