Interview: Gene Roberts
Date of Interview: June 28, 2010
Place of Interview: Bath, North Carolina
Interviewer: Ford Risley
Biographical Summary
Gene Roberts was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, he spent two years in the U.S. Army. He worked a reporter at the Goldsboro News-Argus, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and Raleigh Observer. He also was a reporter and metro editor at the Detroit Free Press before joining The New York Times as a reporter and later national editor. He became editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972 and spent 18 years leading the newspaper. He returned to the Times as executive editor for three years and then joined the faculty at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
Interview Highlights
Robert speaks about his family, including his father who was a newspaper editor; about growing up in North Carolina; about his various reporting positions as well as some of the major stories he covered; about his years as editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, when it became one of the most respected newspapers in the United States and the winner of seventeen Pulitzer Prizes; about serving as executive editor of The New York Times; about serving on the faculty at the University of Maryland; and about being co-author (with Hank Klibanoff) of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for History.