God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times [Hardcover]

Robert H. Phelps (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2009

For nearly twenty years Robert H. Phelps ran interference for, cheered on, and sometimes scolded star reporters and top editors at the New York Times. Starting his editing career at the desk of the Providence Journal-Bulletin, Phelps joined the New York Times as a copy editor, eventually serving as the Times news editor for the Washington bureau. Along the way he struggled with balancing his moral ideals and his personal ambition. In this compelling memoir, Phelps interweaves his personal and professional experiences with some of the most powerful stories of the era.

With candor and keen observation, Phelps chronicles both the triumphant and the tragic events at the Times. He explains the missed lessons of the Pentagon Papers, why the Times played catchup with the Washington Post on the Watergate scandal but eventually surpassed it on covering that seminal story, and how the Times failed to report a key element of the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Phelps offers mixed appraisals of such luminaries as A. M. Rosenthal, James B. Reston, E. Clifton Daniel, and Max Frankel, and expresses great admiration for Seymour Hersh, Neil Sheehan, and Bill Beecher, three unlikely scoop artists.

As Phelps settled in at the New York Times, journalism became the religion he had searched for since his adolescence. Over his tenure of nearly two decades, however, Phelps found that journalism's stark emphasis on fact was insufficient to address many of life's dilemmas and failed to provide the sustaining guidance he envied in his wife's Catholic faith.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Early in his memoir, Phelps explains that he wants to show how his religious or moral concerns have informed his journalism. In that respect, his book falls flat: Phelps's recounting of his spiritual journey seems tacked onto what is at heart the story of his life at the New York Times, a narrative that illuminates the pressures that can drive a news story. Phelps, who served as the Times's Washington news editor from 1965 to 1974, has much to say about journalistic ethics and the relationship between editors and reporters. With grace and charm, he navigates the minefield of infighting between the New York and Washington bureaus, and he describes some of the paper's most influential personalities. Of special interest is his treatment of the Watergate scandal, an event that fundamentally altered the role of journalism in America. For Phelps, highly placed in a bureau widely viewed as having been beaten on the story, it's a charged subject. His take on that watershed moment in his craft will be illuminating to readers with an interest in journalism, professionally or otherwise. —Fred Baerkircher, Twinsburg P.L., OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Phelps, for nearly 20 years an editor at the New York Times, was behind the scenes for some of the most compelling times of American journalism: the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. His devotion was so great that he came to see it as a personal religion. He recalls life in small towns, working for United Press news service, and struggles with conscientious-objector status before becoming a navy war correspondent and moving to the Times. Because of his quiet personality and lack of skills at office politics, he was repeatedly passed over for promotions but found great pride in editing, encouraging reporters, and dealing with the complex personalities of editors and reporters. He recalls a possible mistake that may have cost the Times an important lead on the Watergate story and describes the battles between the New York and Washington bureaus. Phelps moved on to the Boston Globe and continued his devotion to journalism and neglect of a devoted wife. When she died of cancer, after 56 years of marriage, Phelps switched focus to a lifelong yearning he’d had for spiritual meaning. --Vanessa Bush

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd) (April 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815609140
• ISBN-13: 978-0815609148
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,557,687 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Man for Our Times, April 24, 2009

By 

William Robbins (Boerne, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times (Hardcover)

For all the years Robert H. Phelps helped produce The New York Times, journalism was his religion. From his early days as a copy editor on its National Desk to his years of eminence as the News Editor of its Washington Bureau, he held firm in his faith that it was the world's leading newspaper, and he did all in his power to build on it and to inspire all others under his influence to do the same. Bob, as most of us addressed him (bp as he modestly signed his memos), was a contemporary of luminaries such as the beloved Eugene Roberts, Scottie Reston and Max Frankel, the feared Abe Rosenthal and Harrison Salisbury and brilliant reporters such as Neil Sheehan, Tad Szulc, Jim Naughton and Bill Beecher. Some of them shone brighter because of Bob behind them, nurturing, coaxing, and supporting, others because he stood up to them. It might have been due, though he doesn't say so, to his performance teamed with Frankel in coverage throughout one grim night of the sinking of the Andrea Doria that boosted him up the first rungs of the ladder to his own place among them.
But for many of us who worked with him or reported to him, Bob was himself an idol, the ideal editor, pushing his sub-editors to drag the ultimate effort out of writers and reporters, and pressing reporters to fill the holes in their stories, to find answers to questions they had failed to ask, and to seek further truths beyond their stories.
Here in God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at The New York Times, Phelps leaves no unanswered questions. Through his days at the center of some of the greatest news stories of our times, from the Andrea Doria to Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, he steeps us in both the drama and the tensions of news gathering and news writing. Neither seeking aggrandizement, shunning embarrassment nor deferring to higher authority, he tells with spirit and insight a story of rivalry between the country's two most outstanding newspapers as well as inside stories of the continuing struggle for power at The Times
And finally, anyone who comes away dry-eyed from his final tribute to Betty, his adored wife, has never known the love of a good woman. There, near the end of the ninth decade of his life, as he continues his search for the comfort she found in her Roman Catholic faith, the hard-boiled editor's writing soars and lands with one of the most moving final lines readers will ever find in modern literature.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wise man's take on journalism; this book is the real deal, May 3, 2009

By 

M. Del Giudice "margdelg" (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times (Hardcover)

What I most liked about this absorbing book was its sincerity. Phelps reflects on his inner life and his stellar career as an editor behind some of the biggest stories of the 20th century with clarity and wisdom, driven not by a desire to even any scores or aggrandize himself but simply to understand how things happened and why people did the things they did. He doesn't pull any punches in his appraisals of some of the biggest names in journalism (he holds everyone accountable, especially himself), but he clearly isn't out to get anybody. How refreshing. Terrible title, but the book itself is a fast read, poignant, informative, and funnier than I expected it to be.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening from an Insider's Perspective, May 7, 2009

By 

Ira Kalfus (College Park, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times (Hardcover)

Bob Phelps came to the New York Times Washington Bureau in November 1975. I worked there at the time and witnessed many of the things he described in the book. I also learned many others. The book brought back many fond memories. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his book and could not put it down. Congratulations on a job well done!
Ira Kalfus