Soma Golden Behr, a longtime editor at The New York Times who was a centrifuge of story ideas—they flew out of her in all directions—and whose journalistic passions were poverty, race and class, led to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting. died Sunday in Manhattan. It was 84.
Her death, in Mount Sinai Hospital’s palliative care unit, came after breast cancer spread to other organs, said her husband, William A. Behr.
Ms. Golden Bear, whose degree in economics from Radcliffe led to a lifelong interest in issues surrounding inequality, was instrumental in overseeing several major series for The Times that examined class and race differences. Each recruited teams of reporters and photographers for intensive, sometimes year-long missions.
“How Race Is Lived in America,” overseen by Gerald M. Boyd, who would become the paper’s first black editor, dispelled the conventional wisdom that the country at the turn of the 21st century had become “transracial.” His deep dives into an incorporated church, the military, a slaughterhouse and elsewhere won the paper a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
Another series, “Class in America,” was a 2005 examination of how social class, often unspoken, caused glaring imbalances in society.
And earlier, Ms. Golden Bear oversaw a 10-part series in 1993, “Children of the Shadows,” which pushed past stereotypes of inner-city youth. Journalist Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing for her poignant portrait in the series of a 10-year-old boy caring for four siblings.
Hired by The Times as a financial reporter in 1973 after 11 years at Business Week, Ms. Golden Behr was often one of the few women or the only woman at the table. She was the first to lead the national bureau, appointed in 1987, and after being promoted to assistant managing editor in 1993, she was only the second woman from the newsroom to appear on the masthead.
“At five feet, 10 and a half inches tall, her presence could fill almost any room, and she rarely had to worry about men talking to her, which gave her an advantage over many women at the Times,” Adam Nagourney wrote. in “The Times,” a 2023 book about the newspaper’s modern history.
Mr. Nagourney described her as “cerebral, thoughtful and explosive all at once” and quoted her in an interview: “I’m a word salad. I explode a lot.”
Jonathan Landman, a former deputy managing editor of The Times whom Ms. Golden Bear brought out of the copy desk to oversee national correspondents, said her style was markedly different from other bureaus.
“She wasn’t an editor who said we need x to write y,” she said. “He’d say, ‘We’ve got to think about housing!’ What would follow were interesting conversations and memos, and would make people think thematically in different ways. It was something.”
Although Ms. Golden Bear was a trailblazer and mentored other women at the paper, she did not see herself as an ideological feminist.
In 1991, during her tenure as national editor, the paper came under fire for a profile of a young woman who accused William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, of rape. Critics inside and outside the newsroom accused the paper of voyeurism and woman-shaming citing a friend of hers who said she had a “bit of a wild streak”.
In a contentious newsroom-wide meeting, Ms. Golden Bear defended the article. “I’m overwhelmed by the depth of the response,” she said, adding, “I can’t account for every curious mind that reads the New York Times.”
Soma Suzanne Golden was born on August 27, 1939, in Washington, DC, the eldest of three children of Dr. Benjamin Golden, a surgeon, and Edith (Seiden) Golden.
He graduated with a BA from Radcliffe College and an MS from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. In 1974 she married Mr. Behr, a social worker and psychoanalyst. The couple lived in Manhattan and Hopewell Junction, New York
Stephen Greenhouse, a former business and labor reporter for The Times, recalls that when Ms. Golden Bear was poached from Business Week in 1973, where she was chief Washington economist, it was seen as a coup.
“Making the coup even bigger at the time, Soma was a star who was a woman,” Mr Greenhouse said. “She was highly regarded in the financial sector.”
Four years later, Ms. Golden Behr was appointed to the editorial board. She was the only woman to write editorials exclusively, often on women’s issues, gay rights and inequality.
“After a few years he said something like, I don’t know that I have other opinions, I’ve said it all,” Mr. Behr recalled. He went on to edit the Sunday business section for five years.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by their daughter, Ariel G. Behr, who works for a nonprofit organization that funds affordable housing; Their son, Zachary G. Behr, an executive at the History Channel; four grandchildren; and a sister, Carol Golden.
When she retired from journalism in 2005, Ms. Goldenbear became director of the New York Times College Scholarship Program, which paid four years of expenses for students who had excelled academically despite difficult circumstances such as homelessness.
When her funding was cut, Ms. Golden Behr and a partner, Melanie Rosen Brooks, created a similar independent program in 2010, Scholarship Plus — an extension of Ms. Golden Behr’s desire to address inequality. Donor-funded Scholarship Plus annually supports 20 students from poor backgrounds by supplementing their college financial aid to avoid student loans, striving to bring its scholars on an equal footing with their affluent peers.
Ms. Golden Bear sometimes missed the camaraderie of the newsroom. She would invite journalists she had worked with over the years – all women – to her Upper West Side home. By the end of the pandemic, the gatherings would be attended by up to 30 women, driving from Boston.
