I joined the desk in November 2023, and it has been a revelation to me that to merit a New York Times obituary, you don’t have to be a household name. So many people I didn’t know of or knew just glancingly led fascinating lives. They set the world spinning slightly differently — by negotiating an environmental treaty, by breaking barriers as a Black military officer, or by winning a landmark legal case that gave undocumented migrants the right to go to public schools. One of the pleasures of the beat is writing about people from all walks of life and all points of the ideological compass.
I was national correspondent on the Politics desk and covered the presidential elections of 2012, 2016, 2020 and part of 2024. I focused particularly on voters. I lived in Iowa for all of 2015 in the run-up to its fabled caucuses. I have also been the Mid-Atlantic bureau chief and a national education reporter. Before that, I was the founding editor of the Sunday Styles and Thursday Styles sections and oversaw them for 12 years. I conceived the “Modern Love” column in 2004, but credit for its juggernaut success — including spinoff books, a podcast and a television show — belongs to its longtime editor, Daniel Jones.
Before joining The Times in 1994, I wrote for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Outside and Sports Illustrated.
As a reporter for The New York Times, I am committed to upholding the standards of integrity outlined in our Ethical Journalism Handbook. Just because your subjects are dead doesn’t mean they don’t deserve your fullest effort to be objective and evenhanded.
Email: [email protected]
The first woman to serve as the paper’s national editor, she focused on issues of race, class and poverty, drawing prizes, and rose to the newsroom’s top echelon.
By Trip Gabriel
An artist and a musician as well, he had a long list of credits that included the sitcoms “Roseanne” and “Veep.”
By Trip Gabriel and Orlando Mayorquín
With an emphasis on younger viewers, he established the networks as serious rivals to ABC, CBS and NBC, which had ruled television for nearly 40 years.
By Trip Gabriel
He had success on the rugby pitch and in boardrooms, building a media empire and boosting Heinz’s profits, but his fortunes buckled in the global financial crisis.
By Trip Gabriel
She made significant contributions at IBM, but she lost her job because of her conviction that she inhabited the wrong body. She later fought for transgender rights.
By Trip Gabriel
After a career as a satellite dish installer, he found success with RFD-TV, a 24-hour cable channel aimed at farmers and ranchers.
By Trip Gabriel
A cultural historian, he was dismissed by Stanford over his opposition to the Vietnam War, a stance that became a cause célèbre of academic freedom.
By Trip Gabriel
A self-described activist-journalist, he was for many years the national affairs correspondent for the community-focused Pacifica network.
By Trip Gabriel
Convicted in the murder of six women (though he boasted of killing many more), he died of unspecified injuries after being assaulted in prison.
By Trip Gabriel
The small chain that he, a brother and a third partner opened in 1963 had become the nation’s largest by the time he retired as its chief executive three decades later.
By Trip Gabriel