Soma Golden Behr, a longtime senior editor at The New York Times who was central to story ideas — they flew from him in all directions — and whose journalistic obsessions with poverty, race and class won him a Pulitzer Prize, died Sunday in Manhattan. She was 84 years old.
She died in the palliative care unit at Mount Sinai Hospital after breast cancer spread to other organs, her husband, William A. Behr said.
Ms. Golden Behr, whose economics degree from Radcliffe sparked a lifelong interest in issues surrounding inequality, was instrumental in overseeing several major series for The Times that examined class and racial divisions. Each recruited squads of reporters and photographers for intensive, sometimes year-long assignments.
“How Race Lives in America,” Gerald M. Boyd, overseeing what would become the paper’s first black managing editor, dismissed the conventional wisdom that the country had become “post-racial” at the turn of the 21st century. His deep dives into an integrated church, the military, a slaughterhouse and elsewhere won the paper Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2001.
The second series, “Class in America” was an examination in 2005 of how social class, often vague, creates apparent imbalances in society.
And earlier, Ms. Golden Behr oversaw a 10-part series in 1993, “Children of the Shadows,” which pushed past stereotypes of youth in inner cities. Reporter Isabel Wilkerson Won a Pulitzer in Feature Writing for her searing portrait in the series of a 10-year-old boy caring for four siblings.
Hired by The Times as economics reporter in 1973 after 11 years at Business Week, Ms. Goldenbehr was often one of the few women or the only woman at the table. Appointed in 1987, she was the first to head the national desk, and after her promotion to assistant managing editor in 1993, she was only the second woman to appear at the masthead from the newsroom.
Adam Nagorny wrote in the 2023 book “The Times” on the contemporary history of the paper.
Mr. Nagorny 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 managing editor at The Times whom Ms. Goldenbehr plucked from the copy desk to edit national correspondents, said her style was markedly different from that of other desk heads.
“She wasn’t an editor who said we need x to write y,” he said. “He would say, ‘We have to think about housing!’ What followed was interesting conversations and memos, and it was something that would make people think differently in terms of content.”
Although Ms. Goldenbehr was a pioneer, and she mentored other women in the paper, she did not see herself as an ideological feminist.
In 1991, during his tenure as national editor, the paper came under fire for a profile of a young woman who had dated Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was accused of rape. Critics inside and outside the newsroom accused the newspaper of voyeurism and shamed the woman, citing a friend who said she had “a bit of a wild streak.”
In a contentious newsroom-wide meeting, Ms. Golden Behr defended the article. “I was shocked by the depth of the response,” she said, “I can’t account for every curious mind that reads The New York Times.”
Soma Suzanne Golden was born on August 27, 1939 in Washington, DC, to Dr. The eldest of three children of Benjamin Golden, a surgeon, and Edith (Seydon) Golden.
She graduated with a BA from Radcliffe College and an MS from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. In 1974, she married Mr. Behr, a social worker and psychoanalyst. The couple lived in Manhattan and Hopewell Junction, NY
Steven GreenhouseA former business and labor reporter for The Times, recalls that when Ms. Golden Behr was lured from Business Week in 1973, where she was the chief economics writer in Washington, it was considered a coup.
“Making the coup even bigger at the time, Soma was a star who was a woman,” Mr. Greenhouse said. “She was highly respected in the field of economics.”
Four years later, Ms. Golden Behr was named to the editorial board. She was the only woman to write editorials exclusively, often on women’s issues, gay rights and inequality.
“A few years later she said something like, I don’t know if I have any more opinion, I’ve said it all,” Mr. Behr recalled. She went on to edit the Sunday business section for five years.
In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Ariel G.; Behr, who works for a nonprofit that finances affordable housing; His son, Zachary G. Behr, a History Channel executive; four grandchildren; and a sister, Carol Golden.
After retiring from journalism in 2005, Ms. Goldenbehr became director of The New York Times College Scholarship Program, which paid four years of tuition to students who excelled academically despite difficult circumstances such as homelessness.
When its funding was cut, Ms. Golden Behr and a partner, Melanie Rosen Brooks, created a similar independent program in 2010, Scholarship Plus – Expanding on Ms. Golden Behr’s desire to address inequality. Scholarship Plus, funded by donors, annually assists 20 students from poor backgrounds, supplementing their college financial aid so they can avoid student loans, trying to put its scholars on the same level as wealthier peers.
Ms. Goldenbehr sometimes missed the camaraderie of the newsroom. She would invite the journalists she had worked with over the years — all of them women — to her home on the Upper West Side. Until the pandemic put an end to the gathering, as many as 30 women would attend, driving from as far as Boston.