Contributing editor David M. Alpern is co-host of "NEWSWEEK ON AIR," the magazine's hour-long news and interview program broadcast nationwide each Sunday by more than 100 stations of the AP Radio Network and around the world via Armed Forces Radio and Metro Broadcast in Hong Kong.

Previously, as a senior editor, Alpern also was in charge of The Newsweek Poll, public-opinion surveys of social and political issues conducted for the magazine by Princeton Survey Research Associates. And he supervised the advance excerpting of books appearing in Newsweek. He worked on books by Dan Quayle, Boris Yeltsin, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Lee Iacocca, O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden and Nancy Reagan.

Alpern's career at Newsweek progressed from New York correspondent in 1966, Periscope writer in 1967, associate editor in Nation in 1968, New York bureau chief in 1972, general editor in National Affairs in 1973, news media editor in 1977, senior writer in National Affairs in 1978, and senior editor/deputy National Affairs editor in 1979.

He joined Newsweek in 1966 after working three years as a New York City reporter for United Press International. His story contributions include a wide variety of subjects written for the National Affairs, Newsmakers, News Media, and Periscope sections. He has either written or edited cover stories and features dealing with diverse topics such as presidential campaigns, crime, the roles of money and the media in politics, welfare, Watergate, the CIA and KGB.

Alpern has received numerous awards. Newsweek On Air has won a silver medal and numerous finalist honors at the International Radio Festival of New York. He and a Newsweek team shared the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge 1983 Citation for "The Watergate Legacy." For the cover profile of Felix Rohatyn, "Mr. Fixit for the Cities," the National Association of Home Builders awarded Alpern first prize in its 1982 Golden Hammer Award competition. A 1981 report on Cuban refugees won him the Lincoln University Unity Award for Political Reporting.

He took honors in the National Association of Realtors' Journalism Awards Competition for an inside report, "A City Revival?" in 1979. Three years earlier, he received a writing award from the Aviation and Space Writers Association for the cover story, "The Concorde Furor."

Alpern received a B.A. in history from Columbia College in New York. While a staffer on the undergraduate newspaper, The Daily Spectator, he earned two McKnight Journalism Awards.