Journalist Charles Lane

He was the editor of The New Republic from 1997 to 1999. During his tenure, Lane oversaw the work of Stephen Glass, a staff reporter who fabricated portions of all or some of the 41 articles he had written for the magazine, in one of the largest fabrication scandals of contemporary American journalism. After leaving the New Republic, Lane went to work for the Post, where, from 2000 to 2007, he covered the Supreme Court of the United States and issues related to the criminal justice system and judicial matters. He has since joined the newspaper's editorial page.

Born to a Jewish family in 1961, Lane attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, where he was managing editor of the school newspaper, The Tattler. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in social studies from Harvard University in 1983. As a Knight Fellow, he earned a Master of Studies in Law from Yale Law School in 1997. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Lane is a former foreign correspondent for Newsweek and served briefly as the magazine's Berlin bureau chief. For his coverage in Newsweek of the former Yugoslavia, Lane earned a Citation of Excellence from the Overseas Press Club."

The New Republic's owner, Marty Peretz, appointed Lane as editor in 1997 after firing then-editor Michael Kelly.

In 1998, one of the worst journalistic scandals in contemporary American history arose at The New Republic when fabricated reporting by a staff writer, Stephen Glass, was discovered. Lane fired Glass. The Glass fabrications constituted "the greatest scandal in the magazine's history and marked a decade of waning influence and mounting financial losses," The New York Times would later report.

When Lane learned in 1999 that Peretz was planning to replace Lane with Peter Beinart, Lane only first found out about it from the media.

Lane became an editorial writer for The Washington Post. Later, Lane covered the Supreme Court for the Post, before then rejoining the Post's editorial board in 2007. During his second stint on the newspaper's editorial board, Lane wrote primarily about fiscal and economic policy.

Lane has also taught journalism part-time at Georgetown University in Washington, DC and at Princeton University.

In 2008 Lane published The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, about the Colfax massacre of 1873 in Louisiana of blacks by white militia, including the murder of surrendered prisoners.^{[citation needed]} The book received a favorable review in the New York Times.^{[citation needed]} He also authored the nonfiction book Freedom's Detective, which was published in 2017.

In 2009, Lane faced criticism for a column he wrote for the Post entitled "Medical Marijuana Is An Insult to Our Intelligence," in which he belittled a woman named Angel Raich, who was a plaintiff in a Supreme Court case claiming a right to medical marijuana. Lane wrote of Raich that she "might consider a consultation for hypochondria, or perhaps marijuana dependency."

The Post subsequently published a clarification to the column explaining that Raich was "about to undergo an operation to repair... a benign brain tumor." Raich had been facing a "highly risky surgery – surgery that her doctors had originally ruled out because it is too dangerous — because her brain tumor has now become life-threatening."

The 1998 journalism scandal at The New Republic was the subject of the 2003 film Shattered Glass. Lane was portrayed by actor Peter Sarsgaard. Lane himself appears on the commentary on the DVD, alongside writer and director Billy Ray. After the film was released, Lane was interviewed by Terry Gross in an episode of Fresh Air.

In 2003, Glass published a biographical novel entitled The Fabulist about his career of journalistic fabrication. A character named "Robert Underwood" was a significant figure in the novel and interpreted as a fictionalized version of Lane. Reviewing the book for The Washington Post, writer and critic Chris Lehmann wrote that the Underwood character "is meant to induce in-the-know readers to think poorly of Charles Lane." Glass wrote of Lane/Underwood: "Underwood is a domineering, macho control freak. Glass's idea of meting out punishment to this fictional alter ego of his former boss is to impugn his masculinity; even as his office reeks with 'the hairy-chested smell of a man rising to the occasion.'"

Lane is married to a German immigrant from the former East Berlin. They have three children.

• Marshall Poe, "Interview with Charles Lane", New Books in History, 7 Aug 2008
• Appearances on C-SPAN