As Newsweek's San Francisco Bureau Chief since 2000, Karen Breslau led the magazine's coverage of the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California during the state's historic recall election. She continues to cover the Schwarzenegger administration, as well as other news from California and the Pacific Northwest.

Before moving to California, Breslau was Newsweek's White House correspondent, covering Bill Clinton's second term. In 1998, she was one of twelve U.S. journalists selected as a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University. Following her year at Stanford, Breslau became a contributing editor at Wired magazine, writing about the 2000 presidential election and the influence of the Internet and the high-tech community on politics. While based in Silicon Valley, she was also a political commentator for the Web site Audible.com. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

As a member of Newsweek's Special Projects Team during the 1996 campaign, Breslau spent the year leading up to election day covering the Clinton campaign for the Newsweek special election issue, "Clinton II." By guaranteeing confidentiality until after the election, Breslau was able to obtain behind-the-scenes access to the president's top advisers. The 60,000-word special issue, a definitive, inside account of the '96 campaign, was expanded into a book, "Back from the Dead," published by Atlantic Monthly Press in January 1997.

Prior to that, she served as Newsweek's diplomatic correspondent based in the Washington, D.C. since January 1994, accompanying Secretary of State Warren Christopher on missions worldwide. And she was a general editor for Newsweek International in New York since 1993.

Breslau joined the magazine in 1989 as a correspondent in the Bonn/Berlin bureau. Responsible for covering Germany and Eastern Europe, she chronicled the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent reunification of Germany and the transition to democracy in Eastern Europe. In 1991, she also covered the coup against former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Her reporting from the former Yugoslavia helped earn the magazine a 1993 citation for excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America.  Before her career at Newsweek, Breslau worked as a producer at National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," then as a stringer based in Germany.

Breslau completed the John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 1999. From 1999 to 2000, she was an instructor of creative nonfiction in the Stanford Continuing Studies Program. Breslau received her M.A. in political science with an emphasis on Soviet studies from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. In 1984, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of California at Davis, earning a B.A. in international relations and a B.A. in German. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Breslau was born in Rochester, N.Y. She is married and has one son and a daughter.