David J. Jefferson is in charge of the magazine's business and technology coverage, managing a team of nine writers and columnists who produce stories both for the magazine and Newsweek.com. Major areas of coverage include Wall Street, the media and entertainment business, the Internet and high-tech, video gaming, retailing, automotive, food, personal finance and economics. Prior to taking on this position in 2007, Jefferson served for six-and-a-half years as Newsweek's West Coast Editor and Los Angeles Bureau Chief, managing a seven-member staff. 

In addition to his work as an editor, Jefferson, who is based in Los Angeles, has written numerous stories for the magazine, including covers on AIDS at 25, which was nominated for a 2007 National Magazine Award for Single-Topic Issue; the Methamphetamine epidemic in the U.S.; and the TV show "Desperate Housewives." 

Jefferson came to Newsweek from The Wall Street Journal  in New York, where he last served as assistant foreign editor in charge of the newspaper's correspondents in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. From 1996 until 2000, he was a senior special writer/editor on the Journal's "Page One" staff. During his tenure on Page One, he helped edit three Staff Pulitzer Prize-winning packages: a 1996 series on AIDS and protease inhibitors, a 1998 series on the Russian economic crisis and a 1999 series on U.S. defense spending and military deployment after the end of the Cold War.

He  joined the Journal's Los Angeles bureau in 1986, where he specialized in writing about the West Coast for the newspaper's signature "A-Hed" column. He also covered the entertainment and aerospace industries, and worked on numerous breaking stories including the Menendez brothers trial, the Rodney King beating, the civil unrest of 1992 and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. In 1994, he was named the Journal's Los Angeles deputy bureau chief.  Jefferson began his career at the San Diego Tribune (now the Union-Tribune) as a reporter in 1985.
       
An L.A. native and the son of actors, Jefferson graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Magna Cum Laude from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in print journalism in 1986.