Tom Shales, longtime TV critic for The Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize for his work in 1988, the same year he won a citation from the American Society of Newspaper Editors for his post-mortem "appreciations" of TV and movie notables.

Shales, born in Elgin, Illinois, was editor of his high school newspaper, The Mirror, and his college newspaper, The Eagle, at The American University in Washington, DC, where he received a BA in 1977. In addition to the Post, Shales has written for Electronic Media (later called TV Week), Esquire, Playboy, and other publications. He served for 25 years as a movie critic at National Public Radio, many of those years on the program "Morning Edition."

On television, he filled in for the late Gene Siskel on two editions of "Siskel & Ebert at the Movies" and has appeared on talk shows hosted by Conan O'Brien, Charlie Rose, Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey and with Garry Shandling on an episode of Shandling's "Larry Sanders Show."

He is co-author, with James Andrew Miller, of the 2002 bestseller "Live from New York: An Uncensored History of 'Saturday Night Live'" and author of two collections of his newspaper pieces, "On the Air!" and "Legends."

He lives in McLean, Va. His favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor is Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.