Soma Golden Behr, longtime editor of the New York Times, who was a centrifuge of story ideas—they flowed from her in every direction—and whose journalistic passions were poverty, race, and class social media, which led to reporting that won Pulitzer Prizes, died Sunday in Manhattan. She was 84 years old.
Her death, in the Palliative Care Unit at Mount Sinai Hospital, came after breast cancer had spread to other organs, said her husband, William A. Behr.
Ms. Golden Behr, whose degree in economics from Radcliffe led to a lifelong interest in issues related to inequality, was instrumental in overseeing several major series for the Times that examined class divisions and of race. Each recruited teams of journalists, photographers and editors for intensive missions, sometimes lasting a year.
“How Race is Lived in America,” supervised with Gerald M. Boyd, who would become the Times’ first black editor, dispelled the conventional wisdom that the country had become “post-racial” by the turn of the 21st century. His deep dives into an integrated church, the military, a slaughterhouse and elsewhere earned the newspaper the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001.
Another series, “Class in America,” was published in 2005 and focused on how social class, often unspoken, produced glaring imbalances in society. The series on race and class were later published as books.
In 1993, Ms. Golden Behr had already supervised a ten-episode series entitled “Les enfants de l’ombre,” which went beyond stereotypes about young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods. Isabelle Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for his burning portrait in the series about a 10-year-old boy who takes care of four siblings.
Hired by the Times as a business reporter in 1973 after 11 years at Business Week magazine, Ms. Golden Behr was often one of the few women, if not the only woman, at the table. She was the first to head the national desk, appointed in 1987, and after a promotion to deputy editor in 1993, she was only the second woman on the newsroom floor to appear at the top of the list, the top echelon of editors.
“At five feet and ten and a half inches tall, her presence could fill just about any room, and she rarely had to worry about men talking about her, which gave her an advantage over many women in the Times”, Adam. Nagourney wrote in “The Times,” a 2023 book about the contemporary history of the newspaper.
Mr. Nagourney described her as “cerebral, contemplative 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 editor at The Times who Ms. Golden Behr brought into the newsroom to edit national correspondents, said her style was markedly different from that of other bureau chiefs.
“She wasn’t an editor saying we need x to write y,” he said. “She was saying, ‘We need to think about housing!’ What would follow were interesting conversations and memos, and she would get people thinking thematically in a different way. That was something.”
Although Golden Behr was a pioneer, mentoring other women within the newspaper, she did not consider herself an ideological feminist.
In 1991, when she was national editor, the paper came under fire for its profile of a young woman who had accused William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, of rape. Critics inside and outside the newsroom accused the paper of voyeurism and of humiliating the woman, who was identified by name and quoted by a friend as saying she had had “a little bit of a wild side.”
At a contentious editorial meeting, Ms. Golden Behr defended the article. “I’m shocked by the magnitude of the reaction,” she said, adding, “I can’t explain all the weird minds that read The New York Times.”
Soma Suzanne Golden was born August 27, 1939, in Washington, D.C., the eldest of three children of Dr. Benjamin Golden, a surgeon, and Edith (Seiden) Golden.
She received a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College and a master’s degree from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. In 1974, she married Mr. Behr, a social worker and psychoanalyst. The couple lived in Manhattan and Hopewell Junction, N.Y.
Steven Serreformer economics and labor reporter at the Times, recalled that when Ms. Golden Behr was lured to Business Week in 1973, where she was Washington economics editor, it was seen as a coup.
“What made the coup even bigger at the time was that Soma was a star, but also a woman,” Greenhouse said. “She was extremely respected in the economic sphere.”
Four years later, Golden Behr was appointed to the editorial board, the only woman writing exclusively editorials, often on women’s issues, gay rights and inequality.
“After a few years, she said something like, I don’t know if I have any other opinions, I’ve said it all,” Behr recalled. She went on to edit the Sunday business section for five years.
Besides her husband, she is survived by their daughter, Ariel G. Behr, who works for a nonprofit that funds affordable housing; their son, Zachary G. Behr, an executive at the History Channel; four grandchildren; and a sister, Carol Golden.
After retiring from journalism in 2005, Ms. Golden Behr became director of the New York Times College Scholarship Program, which paid four years of expenses for students who excelled academically despite difficult circumstances such as homelessness.
When its funding was cut, Ms. Golden Behr and her partner, Melanie Rosen Brooks, created a similar independent program in 2010, Scholarship Plus — an extension of Golden Behr’s desire to combat inequality. Scholarship Plus, funded by donors, supports 20 students from disadvantaged backgrounds each year by supplementing their college financial aid so they can avoid student loans, with the goal of putting its scholars on a level playing field with their affluent peers.
Ms. Golden Behr sometimes missed the camaraderie of the editorial office. She invited journalists she had worked with over the years – all women – to her home on the Upper West Side. Until the pandemic put an end to these gatherings, up to 30 women attended, traveling from Boston.
