Former New York Times editor Robert H. Phelps Delivers the Kurtz Seminar Lecture

March 10, 2010 |

Robert H. Phelps—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with The New York Times and Boston Globe—helped shape coverage of some of the most formative stories of modern American journalism. Phelps will discuss “You, the News, and the Internet” as  the guest lecturer at Goucher College’s fifth annual Myra Berman Kurtz ’66 Seminar, held Wednesday, March 10, 2010, at 7:30 p.m. in Buchner Hall of the Alumnae/i House.

This event is free and open to the public. To reserve tickets, call the Box Office at 410-337-6333 or e-mail boxoffice@goucher.edu.

Phelps got his start in 1941, earning $20 per week as a reporter for the now defunct Citizen in Ambridge, PA. After a stint with the United Press wire service, he joined the U.S. Navy, where he served as an enlisted combat correspondent based out of Okinawa during World War II. After the war, he worked at The Providence Journal before landing a job as a copyeditor for The New York Times, where he was promoted several times.

As the news editor of the Times’ Washington bureau from 1965 to1974, Phelps coordinated the paper’s reporting on such seminal moments as the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the Pentagon Papers, and Watergate.

In 1974, Phelps left the Times and took a job as the executive editor of the Boston Globe, where he supervised the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of school desegregation.

Phelps, who turned 90 last July, recently penned his memoirs, titled God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times. In the book, he interweaves his personal and professional experiences with some of the most powerful stories of the era.

His lecture is a presentation of the Kurtz Seminar series, which was endowed by the late Myra Berman Kurtz ’66 and her husband, Dr. Stuart Kurtz, to present speakers at Goucher College who will inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in a variety of fields. The programs are presented under the auspices of the Roxana Cannon Arsht ’35 Center for Ethics and Leadership. Supported by a $2 million gift from her daughter, Adrienne Arsht, the Arsht Center at Goucher College explores issues in ethics and leadership across the range of liberal arts disciplines.