Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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

If you want to know how it was inside West 43rd St. during the glory years of The New York Times (which has since moved to Eighth Ave.) this is the book to read. Robert Phelps, who was the top editor in the Times' Washington Bureau for years and later executive editor of The Boston Globe gives a remarkably candid account of his tenure. Sometimes that honesty results in exposing his own errors and misjudgments, but those are few. The foibles of the most powerful editors in America are examined with the same honest and sharp eye.
For anyone who aspires to be an ethical journalist, this could be his or her bible. And speaking of which, there's a healty dose of spirituality in this volume as well. Overall, a compelling read.

This fine book (God and the Editor) by Robert H. Phelps dramatizes the importance of creative, humane editors to the state of the news and thereby to the nation. As the Internet saps the traditional news business of its financial support, it also is eroding this vital tier of quality assurance. Phelps does not make a point of this, but it emerges from the book's fascinating account of the career of an important journalistic figure.
Phelps pulls no punches in evaluating the work of some of the nation's top journalists he worked with at the New York Times and the Boston Globe, both of which he served in major jobs. He also lays out a career of journalistic improvement from serving as a military correspondent in World War II and a rapid reporter writer for the United Press to his greater positions at the best of the main-stream papers.
For an insider's perspective of such major stories as the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Boston school desegregation conflict, this book may be the most useful and entertaining source available.
[Disclosure: I worked with Bob at the Times, side by side in the Washington bureau.}
--- Cleve Mathews

Robert Phelps, whose long career in journalism included almost thirty years as a key editor at The New York Times and then The Boston Globe, has written a riveting memoir. Perhaps most arresting is Phelps's first-hand account of the role The New York Times played in the Watergate/Pentagon Papers affair, which sheds surprising new light on some of the principals. But God and The Editor is also an engaging and -- unlike so much current autobiography written as "creative nonfiction" -- punctiliously honest story of a life in journalism. And it is the tale of a spiritual quest, told in the context of Phelps's professional life, his marriage, and the moral tension between them. The lovely story of the author's 56-year marriage to his adored Betty, and the lessons her life and loss taught him, inform the rest of his narrative: in the end, Betty draws God and the editor closer than the latter's rationalist younger self would ever have predicted. I would add that Phelps has a fine eye for telling detail and a sense of humor that sneaks up on you. Buy this book!

Books that report on what really goes on inside a beloved and well known institution can be fun to read. And so it is with this book written by a man who worked for many years as a top editor of the New York Times and later the Boston Globe He is a man of strong personal ethics who wants to serve his fellow man by bringing important news and stories to the public that are written in a truthful and objective way. It is one thing to want to live such a life and quite a different one to accomplish it. To succeed at the NYT takes talent, hard work, and perseverance. In the course of this career he worked with many of the famous names. His insights and stories make about them make very entertaining reading. How his paper missed out on the early part of Watergate to the Washington Post (recently a news story itself) and later recovered is fascinating.

Those of us who like to READ words instead of having them thrown at us on TV screens still appreciate news media as WRITTEN. This book celebrates the life and times of a written news media journalist, Bob Phelps, in a way that is just as exciting and vital as the TV news tries (pretends) to be. Enjoy the book. I did.

Robert Phelps's book is a stunning account of how devotion to truth and accuracy in the news has guided journalism at its best in the last half-century. It could not be more timely. With newspapers suddenly struggling to survive and new technologies competing to deliver information - including those influenced by lobbies, PR and advertising - never has it been more important to have clear ethical standards for presenting news. As long as people vote or care what is happening around them, we need honest journalism, whatever the medium, with which to make informed decisions or choices. Robert Phelps's book is timeless in its setting of standards, and it delivers the facts with feeling. It made me laugh and cry. Don't miss it!

No question about it -- Phelps was there, he saw a lot, and he pulls back the curtain on the politics inside the NYT. I'm glad he decided, even at the age of 89, to write his memoir. While he unabashedly tells us how effective he was as an editor, and where other big names (Abe Rosenthall, Reston, etc.)can be faulted, he is equally honest about his own weaknesses. It's rare to see such self-abnegation from an ink-stained wretch -- as witness the author's photo on the fly leaf: he could have used any number of more complementary shots but chose an honest one. The editing of the book is appalling: punctuation and syntax and stylistic problems abound. Perhaps his editors were a bit timid to take him on. At times the narration sounds as though it were transcribed from a tape recording.

With all its faults, the book is an informative, and ultimately uplifting testament that's well worth the time.