Doyle D. McManus is the son of Lois Doyle and the late James R. McManus, a San Francisco, California advertising executive.

He earned an A.B. in history at Stanford University in 1974, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Brussels.

As an undergraduate, McManus worked on the Stanford Daily.

He was a foreign correspondent for three years at the United Press International, beginning in Brussels.

He joined the L.A. Times in 1978, reporting from Los Angeles, the Middle East, Central America, New York. He transferred to the Times's Washington, D.C., bureau in 1983, where he covered the U.S. State Department, and White House. Hesucceeded Jack Nelson as bureau chief in 1996. After thirteen years as bureau chief, he reportedly told colleagues that he had "long ago asked for a new assignment." In November, 2008, the financially troubled Tribune Company made him a columnist when it closed the L.A. Times's bureau in favor of a single Washington bureau for all its newspapers.

Mr. McManus has written for Foreign Policy, Time, Sports Illustrated, and the London Daily Express. He appears regularly on the PBS commentary program Washington Week.

He has covered every presidential election since 1984. In the 2004 election he gave televised opinions on the truth of campaign claims by both sides. In January, 2008, he was a moderator at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's presidential primary debate in Los Angeles.

In 2009 his newspaper jumped ahead of the media pack's coverage of the Obama administration's first one hundred days, with articles about its first ninety days.

He and his wife reside in Bethesda, Maryland.