New York Times editor to discuss his career

NEW PALTZ — New York Times investigative reporter and editor Martin Gottlieb will talk about contrasting worlds of journalism – from the sensational tabloid to mainstream objectivity – in a talk at the State University of New York at New Paltz at 5 p.m. on April 1 in Lecture Center 104. The event is free and open to the public.

Titled "Varieties of Journalistic Experience: Reflections on Many Years in Many Newspaper Worlds,” Gottlieb will discuss his experiences as a Times reporter and editor, as editor of the New York Daily News and as editor of the Village Voice.

Gottlieb currently is the seventh James H. Ottaway Sr. Professor of Journalism in the Journalism Program of the Communication and Media Department. He is teaching a class on the characteristics of quality journalism that are challenged today by the demands of an intensifying, 24-hour news cycle.

Gottlieb has spent more than 35 years in journalism, beginning as a reporter with the New York Daily News, America’s archetype tabloid newspaper. He later became a top editor at the News. He has also worked as an investigative reporter for the Times, the quintessential establishment newspaper where he is an editor. He is currently on special assignment as the Times liaison with the International Herald Tribune.

Gottlieb has held a variety of positions at the Times, including a stint as its special projects editor on the metropolitan desk from 1990 to 1993 and on the national desk from 1995 to 1997. Articles by a team of reporters run by Gottlieb on dubious practices at the nation’s largest for-private hospital chain helped lead to indictments, a nearly billion dollar settlement with the government and a shake-up of its board and top management. The project won a George F. Polk Award in 1998.

Gottlieb became editor of the Village Voice in 1986. The Voice was America’s first alternative weekly newspaper in the 1950s, and is still the nation’s best known alternative newspaper.

“Gottlieb has seen three starkly different worlds of journalism,” remarked journalism professor Robert Miraldi. “He is a rare commodity to have been so successful in such contrasting styles of journalism.”

The Ottaway Professorship is named for the founder of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., which is now a coast-to-coast group of 15 dailies, 13 Sunday and more than 18 weeklies and numerous specialty publications and Web sites in nine states. The flagship newspaper of the chain is the Times Herald-Record in Middletown. The professorship was made possible by a gift from James Ottaway Jr.

Six well-known journalists have preceded Gottlieb. Three have been Pulitzer Prize winners, including former New York Times investigative reporter Sydney Schanberg; Bernard Stein, an editorial writer with the Riverdale Press in the Bronx; and John Darnton, a former Times foreign correspondent. The other professors were award-winning National Public Radio reporter Ann Cooper, who headed the nation’s foremost advocacy group for the protection of journalists; Roger Kahn, the author of 20 books and one of America’s foremost literary journalists; and Trudy Lieberman, one of America’s best consumer reporters.