Isaiah J. Poole is the executive editor of TomPaine.com and OurFuture.org. He most recently worked for Congressional Quarterly, where he covered congressional leadership and tracked major bills through Congress.

He has worked for more than 25 years as an editor and reporter for several newspapers, mostly in Washington, and has written articles on topics ranging from presidential politics to pop culture. He covered the 1988 presidential campaign for The Washington Times, but resigned from the paper three years later in disgust over its right-wing distortion of the news. He left the field of journalism briefly to run a nonprofit AIDS education organization in Washington, where he became noted for his advocacy for people living with HIV.

His later journalism successes included the establishment of a chain of weekly newspapers in Prince George's County, Md., and a stint as an award-winning editorial page editor for a Knight-Ridder-owned daily newspaper in central Pennsylvania.

Poole is also a founding member of the Washington Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, where he has been a forceful critic of how the news industry addresses race, gender and sexual orientation issues.

Poole is a native Washingtonian.

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