November 27, 2006 @ 5:19 pm

Pioneering News Editor, Gerald Boyd, Dies

by: Linda Hobbs

According to Boyd’s wife, Robin Stone, Boyd struggled with the disease for a year after being diagnosed in February. In the New York Times, Boyd was described as putting, “some colleagues off with his occasional irascibility and brusqueness. But he won the respect of many others for his determination to beat the competition, both by publishing scoops and by providing comprehensive coverage.” Boyd’s accomplishments ranged far and wide. He became the youngest person awarded the Nieman fellowship at Harvard, at the ripe age of 28. After joining the New York Times, he won the newspaper three Pulitzer Prizes for leading coverage on topics ranging from poverty to race relations in America. And besides being the Times’ first black metropolitan and managing editor, he was considered as a major influence to many other lack journalists. left In spite of all his accomplishments, Boyd's reputation was blemished by 2003’s Jayson Blair scandal. Blair, who was found to have fabricated numerous Times stories, caused a media frenzy regarding the Times credibility, which later led to criticism concerning the management style of Boyd and the Times executive editor, Howell Raines. Boyd resigned from the paper that same year. After his resignation, Boyd begin to write a column for Universal Press Syndicate about politics in the newsroom, and he joined Columbia University's prestigious Graduate School of Journalism in 2004 as a journalism consultant. He was working on a memoir at the time of his death.

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Article tags: Black, Death, Jayson Blair, Ny Times 

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