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Paul Solman

About Paul

Paul Solman has been a correspondent for the PBS News Hour since 1985, mainly covering business and economics.

While attending Brandeis University, Solman joined the Brandeis newspaper, The Justice, and eventually became its editor. He got his first journalism job in 1970 at the alternative weekly Boston After Dark.

Solman became founding editor of the rival alternative weekly The Real Paper in 1972 and went on to become a feature writer and investigative reporter.

Solman received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978.

After a few years of local PBS reporting, he inaugurated the PBS business documentary series, ENTERPRISE with fellow Nieman Fellow Zvi Dor-Ner.

In the 1980s, Solman produced documentaries, returned to local reporting, and joined the Harvard Business School faculty, teaching media, finance and business history in the school's Advanced Management Program. He also co-authored “Life and Death on the Corporate Battlefield” in 1983, which appeared in Japanese, German and Taiwanese editions. He joined the MacNeil/Lehrer Report in 1985.

In the '90s, with sociologist Morrie Schwartz, a teacher of his at Brandeis, Solman helped create -- and wrote the introduction to the book "Morrie: In His Own Words," which preceded "Tuesdays with Morrie.” In 2015, Solman co-authored “Get What's Yours: the Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.”

Solman has lectured on college campuses since the '80s and has written for numerous publications, including the Journal of Economic Education. As a one-time cab driver, kindergarten teacher, crafts store co-owner and management consultant, he was also the author and presenter of "Discovering Economics with Paul Solman," a series of videos to accompany introductory economics textbooks.

In 2007, he joined the faculty at Yale, where he contributed to the university's Grand Strategy course for a decade. In 2011, he was the Richman Distinguished Visiting Professor at his alma mater, Brandeis, where he taught a seminar, "Economic Grand Strategies: From Chimps to Champs? Or Chumps?" He has taught regularly at West Point, the Naval War College and was an adjunct faculty member at Gateway Community College in New Haven, CT, where he created the evening program, “Yale@Gateway.” In 2016, he was a Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University.

Since 2019, Solman has chaired the board of the anti-polarization American Exchange Project, a nonpolitical nonprofit domestic "foreign exchange" program that introduces high school seniors from everywhere in America to each other, sends and embeds them, for free, in communities unlike their own.

Solman took up tennis at 50. His father was the American expressionist artist Joseph Solman. He is married with two children and seven grandchildren.

Full Bio

Paul’s Recent Stories

Arts Aug 04

On Dow’s Worst Day Since 2008, Running for Cover

A trader bows his head on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell Thursday; photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images. Just back from lunch, at which Brandeis classicists Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Cheryl Walker schooled me…

Economy Aug 04

On Dow’s Worst Day Since ’08, Running for Cover

A trader bows his head on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell Thursday; photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images. Just back from lunch, at which Brandeis classicists Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow and Cheryl Walker schooled me…

Economy Aug 02

No Cylons, No Caprica, But Still Pretty Fracking Cool

Pretty fracking cool, if you'll pardon our Battlestar Galactica reaction to this video from Studio 20 at New York University. Whether or not the method of natural gas extraction known as "fracking" is more costly than beneficial is the…

Arts Aug 01

Default by Debt Ceiling? ‘Complete Nonsense’

// Editor's Note: On Monday's NewsHour Paul Solman reports from the trading floor of Natixis CIB Americas to see how the stock market was reacting to news of the debt-ceiling deal. Turns out the market is reacting…

Arts Jul 29

How the U.S. Racked Up $14 Trillion in Debt

A fascinating set of graphic debt data, courtesy of the New York Times. Meanwhile, amidst all the scare talk of a bond rate crisis, has anyone noticed that the bond market is rallying mightily…

Arts Jul 29

Fancy a Pint? Brew Throughout the World

Photo by Flickr user hakaider. Has all the talk about the debt ceiling left you wanting to reach for a cold one? Or several? How likely are they to be drowning their sorrows elsewhere in the world? You might…

Economy Jul 27

China’s Communism and Capitalism: The New Yin Yang?

The short third installment of Yoram Bauman's vlog from China is well worth the watching, highlighting the tension between the "official" China and what's really going on there. Communist Party founder Mao AND $300,000 Porsche's? Yoram asks. "Do…

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