Doug Saunders is the chief of the Globe and Mail's London-based European Bureau, writes the weekly Reckoning column in the Focus section as well as daily reports and weekly features on European issues and international social and political trends. He has been a writer with the Globe since 1995.
He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and educated in Toronto. After early success in magazines and journalistic research, he first worked for the Globe and Mail as a general news reporter, then as an editorial writer and feature writer. In 1996, he joined the weekend section where he created a specialized writing position on media, culture, advertising and popular phenomena. In 1999, he became the paper's Los Angeles bureau reporter, covering both social and political stories in the American west and the broader developments in wider U.S. society.
He has won the National Newspaper Award, the Canadian counterpart to the Pulitzer Prize, on four occasions, including an unprecedented three consecutive awards for critical writing in 1998-2000, and an award honouring Reckoning as Canada’s best column in 2006. He has also won the Stanley McDowell Prize for writing and has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award.
In 2002, he returned to Toronto, where he took a position as a roving international-affairs writer. He launched a column in the Focus section aimed at examining developments in the world of intellectual and political ideas, keyed to current news developments.
He began working in the European bureau in 2004. Aside from his coverage of European affairs, he has done extensive writing from the Middle East, Russia and the Indian subcontinent.
Hurt the criminal or hurt the crime?
Sadly, in most countries, a sense of anger and vengeance is motivating prison reform these days
The strange paradox of the constitutional monarch
Her long reign may mark this institution’s peak moment of success and credibility
Germany needs to loosen up and start consuming
As the IMF has noted, the country’s surplus is a core cause of Europe’s inequality and debt
The French are the globalizers – not the globalized
Presidential candidates argue their country’s way of life is threatened by forces from beyond its borders
A housing crisis of global proportions
People with decent but ordinary employment are shut out of the market from Beijing to Nairobi to Toronto
China: This nation of villagers is having an identity crisis
The village myth is increasingly misleading – and to the extent that Beijing is trying to keep it true, damaging China’s progress
The progressive truth about America
We tend to focus on the dark side, because it fits the popular image. But the loud and intolerant are becoming an endangered species
France's Jews trapped between neighbours and politics
To history’s long gallery of horrific images, we can add that of a helmeted man chasing a terrified seven-year-old girl in Toulouse
Don’t blame microcredit – blame its distortion
High-interest loans to people who earn a dollar a day has been controversial from the beginning
The horror and the hashtag
The #stopkony campaign isn’t the first righteous meme to derail African peace efforts
