[6] His maternal grandfather, Walter H. Bieringer, served as president of the United Service for New Americans which helped to resettle European Jews in the United States after World War II,[7] and served as vice-president of the Associated Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and as a member of a presidential committee, which advised the Truman administration on displaced persons before being named Head of Massachusetts Commission on Refugees in 1957.

[9][1] Hiatt was married to Washington Post editor and writer Margaret "Pooh" Shapiro from 1984 until his death;[5][10][11] the couple lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and had three children.

Hiatt also intensified the online presence of The Washington Post's opinions sections with the addition of bloggers such as Greg Sargent, Jennifer Rubin, Alexandra Petri, and Jonathan Capehart.

[16] During this time The Post also assumed traditionally conservative positions on several major issues: economically, it defended a Republican initiative to allow Social Security personal retirement accounts, and advocated for several free trade agreements.

[21] Human rights attorney Scott Horton in a blog post for Harper's Magazine, writes that Hiatt presided over a "clear trend" towards neoconservative columnists.

[24] Andrew Sullivan, a conservative political blogger for The Atlantic wrote, in response to the sacking of Dan Froomkin, "The way in which the WaPo has been coopted by the neocon right, especially in its editorial pages, is getting more and more disturbing.

[28] Matthew Cooper, White House editor of National Journal magazine, writes that Hiatt "is a bete noir for many liberals because of, among other things, the paper's support of the Iraq War.

"[29] The National Journal reported in November 2014, that Hiatt had offered his resignation to Jeff Bezos, the new owner of The Post, but had been retained.

In December 2009, Hiatt was a featured speaker at the Tokyo Foundation conference entitled "Japan after the Change: Perspectives of Western Opinion Leaders".

In 2011, he was a featured speaker at the Aspen Ideas Festival,[32] and a moderator of the "Asianomics" session of the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, South Korea.