Peter S. Canellos

Peter S. Canellos is managing editor for enterprise at POLITICO, overseeing the site’s magazine, investigative journalism and major projects. He has also been POLITICO’s executive editor, overseeing the newsroom during the 2016 presidential coverage, and the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe.

A native of Boston, Peter is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School. He spent most of his career at the Globe, where at various points he oversaw the paper’s local news coverage and Washington, D.C., bureau. As the Globe’s editorial page editor, he authored numerous editorials urging Bostonians to overcome their parochial divisions and embrace their status as a world-class city.

He also edited the Globe’s book, “Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy,” which was a top-10 New York Times bestseller in 2009. The book also set the stage for much of the analysis of Kennedy’s career following his death from cancer, and supplied most of the anecdotes for President Barack Obama’s eulogy of Kennedy.

For the past 12 years, Peter has worked with the International Women’s Media Foundation overseeing the Elizabeth Neuffer fellowship, given to a woman journalist from around the world to study human rights at MIT and intern at the Globe and New York Times. He has also traveled overseas on human rights trips with the US Holocaust Museum, International Reporting Project, and Robert Bosch foundation, among other groups.

Peter considers the many young journalists he’s hired and mentored over the years to be his greatest accomplishment. As an editor, he has overseen two Pulitzer Prize-winning projects along with five others that were Pulitzer finalists, among many other awards. As a writer, he was recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors award in 2011 for excellence in editorial writing.


Recent Work