Edsall has been a weekly opinion columnist for The New York Times since 2011, covering demographic and strategic trends in American politics. Edsall covered American politics for The Washington Post from 1981 to 2006, and for The Baltimore Sun from 1967 to 1981. He has been a contributing writer for The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Atlantic, and Dissent. He has also written five books. He is the winner of the Carey McWilliams Award of the American Political Science Association, the Noel Markwell Media Award, and was a Pulitzer finalist in 1992 in General Nonfiction.