Gene Roberts is an American journalist and professor of journalism. Roberts was national editor at The New York Times, executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1972 to 1990, and managing editor of The New York Times from 1994 to 1997. Roberts is most known for presiding over the "Golden Age" of The Inquirer, a time in which the newspaper was given the freedom and resources it needed, won 17 Pulitzer Prizes in 18 years, displaced The Philadelphia Bulletin as the city's "paper of record", and was considered to be Knight Ridder's crown jewel as a profitable enterprise and an... influential regional paper. Roberts grew up in North Carolina and worked for newspapers in Goldsboro, N.C.; Norfolk, Va.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Detroit. He covered the Kennedy Assassination in Dallas for the Detroit Free Press and also covered the civil rights movement as a correspondent for The New York Times, where he also served as Saigon bureau chief in 1968 during the Vietnam War. After serving as national editor at the The Times from 1969-1972, he was hired by John S. Knight to head The Inquirer.
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