Soma Golden Behr, a longtime senior editor at The New York Times, who is a conduit for story ideas — they fly out at her in every direction — and whose journalistic passion is poverty, race and class, led to reporting that won a Pulitzer Prize, died Sunday in Manhattan. She is 84 years old.
Her death in Mount Sinai Hospital’s palliative care unit occurred after breast cancer spread to other organs, said her husband, William A. Behr.
Ms. Golden Behr, whose economics degree from Radcliffe led to a lifelong interest in issues surrounding inequality, played a key role in overseeing several major series of The Times, which researched about class and racial divisions. Each series recruits teams of reporters and photographers for intensive, sometimes year-long assignments.
“How Race Is Run in America,” overseen by Gerald M. Boyd, who would become the paper’s first black managing editor, dismantled the conventional wisdom that the country had become “post-racial” in the early 21st century. Deep dives into an integrated church, the military, slaughterhouses, and other places won the paper Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2001.
Another series, “Class in America,” is a 2005 examination of how social class, often unspoken, creates glaring imbalances in society.
And before that, Ms. Golden Behr oversaw the 10-part series in 1993, “Children in the Dark,” which upended stereotypes about inner-city youth. Reporter Isabel Wilkerson won her the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing fiery portrait in a series about a 10-year-old boy who takes care of four siblings.
Hired by The Times as an economics 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 desk. She was the first to head the national desk, appointed in 1987, and after being promoted to assistant managing editor in 1993, she was only the second woman in the newsroom to headline.
“At 5 feet, 10 and a half inches tall, her presence can fill any room and she rarely has to worry about men talking to her, which works to her advantage more than many women at The Times,” Adam Nagourney wrote in “The Times,” a 2023 book about the newspaper’s contemporary history.
Mr. Nagourney described her as “cerebral, pensive and explosive, all at once,” and quoted her in an interview: “I am a word salad; I explode a lot.”
Jonathan Landman, a former deputy editor at The Times, whom Ms. Golden Behr picked from the copy desk to edit for national reporters, said her style was markedly different from other desk chiefs.
“She wasn’t the editor who said we need x to write y,” he said. “She would say, ‘We need to think about housing!’ What followed was interesting conversations and memos, and she would get people to think about the topic in different ways. It was something.”
Although Ms. Golden Behr was a pioneer and mentor to many other women at the newspaper, she did not consider herself an ideological feminist.
In 1991, during her tenure as national editor, the paper was heavily criticized for its profile of a young woman who accused William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, of rape. Critics inside and outside the paper accused the paper of stalking and humiliating the woman by quoting a friend as saying she was “a little wild.”
At a controversial newsroom-wide meeting, Ms. Golden Behr defended the article. “I was shocked by the depth of the response,” she said. “I can’t explain all the strange thoughts I had reading 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.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Radcliffe College and a Master of Science degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. In 1974, she married Mr. Behr, a social worker and psychoanalyst. The couple lives in Manhattan and Hopewell Junction, New York
Steven GreenhouseA former business and labor reporter for The Times, recalls that when Ms. Golden Behr was lured away from Business Week in 1973, where she was the chief economics writer in Washington, it was seen as a coup.
“What made the coup even bigger at the time was that Soma was a star and a woman,” said Mr. Greenhouse. “She was very well respected in the economic field.”
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, she was like, I don’t know if I have any more opinions, I’ve said them all,” Mr. Behr recalled. She moved 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 that funds affordable housing; their son, Zachary G. Behr, chief executive officer of the History Channel; four grandchildren; and a sister, Carol Golden.
When she retired from journalism in 2005, Ms. Golden Behr became director of the New York Times College Scholarship Program, which funds four years of tuition for students who excel academically despite their circumstances. difficult situations such as homelessness.
When funding was cut, Golden Behr and partner Melanie Rosen Brooks created a similar independent program in 2010, Additional scholarships — expanding on Ms. Golden Behr’s desire to tackle inequality. Scholarship Plus, funded by donors, supports 20 disadvantaged students annually, supplementing their college financial aid so they can avoid student loans, try Try to put your scholars on the same level as your rich friends.
Ms. Golden Behr sometimes misses the camaraderie of the newsroom. She would invite journalists she had worked with for years — all women — to her home on the Upper West Side. Until the pandemic ended the gatherings, up to 30 women would attend, driving from as far away as Boston.
