Flora Lewis

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Flora Lewis
Matrix Award
for Newspapers, NYU's Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters

Flora Lewis (25 July 1922 – May 26, 2002) was an American journalist.[1]

Background

Lewis was born into a Jewish family in

summa cum laude three years later. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received her master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism in 1942 just before turning 20.[1]

Career

In 1942, Lewis joined

From 1956 to 1966, Lewis was a reporter for

master list of Nixon political opponents
.

In 1966, Newsday published and syndicated her first column.[1]

In 1972, The New York Times appointed her foreign and diplomatic correspondent. The Times then had a rule against hiring wives of its correspondents, Lewis, however, contributed frequently to The New York Times Magazine and wrote for other publications.[3] She has the distinction of being the first woman to be given her own column on the New York Times op-ed page.[1]

Personal and death

From 1945 to 1972, Lewis was married to New York Times correspondent, editor, and publishing executive Sydney Gruson. She and Gruson had three children: Kerry (born in Ireland), Sheila (born in Israel), and Lindsey (born in Mexico).[3]

Writing for the

Ari Goldman described her thus:

It was a kosher home where Jewish holidays were observed, one family member recalled, but Lewis retained little attachment to traditional Jewish life in her adulthood. In her dispatches she often showed sympathy for Israel, but also felt free to criticize the Jewish state when she thought its policies were wrongheaded. She titled a 1990 column on Israel "Lament for Jerusalem." It expressed a sense of disappointment but also of love, especially for the city’s longtime mayor, Teddy Kollek (b. 1911). She wrote: "If there’s a living soul who embodies the city of Jerusalem, it’s Teddy Kollek. This is a lament for the city, and for him, because he has made his life's work trying to revive it, beautify it and bring it harmony."[4]

She died of cancer in Paris in 2002.[1]

Recognition and awards

Lewis received many awards for her journalism including for distinguished diplomatic reporting from

Matrix Award for Newspapers from New York Women in Communication (1985), and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters from New York University (1987).[1]

Impact

For her obituary, the New York Times wrote:

Heads of government and ordinary readers in the United States and Europe, where she lived for much of her career, looked to Flora Lewis's columns not only for her access to people in high places, but also for the dogged reporting and the sophisticated analysis that resulted.[1]

Seymour Brody likens Lewis's life to "that of a juggler in trying to balance her role as a journalist, wife, and mother," concluding that her achievements in the male-dominated profession "opened the way for other women to enter and to succeed in the newspaper industry." Rupert Cornwell stated that "Lewis had formidable assets, starting with an access to those in power that often made her colleagues green with envy. More important, she possessed a mind that could cut to the essential of an issue with astonishing speed. To her writing she brought a clarity and analytical power that enabled her to explain complicated issues without ignoring all-important nuances."[5]

By contrast, columnist Eric Alterman wrote that at the Times, Lewis "filed from Paris what was quite possibly the most boring regular column in the history of journalism," which "certainly contained no hint that the writer was a woman." The New Republic′s "World's Most Boring" headline competition was inspired by a Lewis column titled "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."[6]

Writings

Flora Lewis wrote four books and contributed to a fifth, according to the Library of Congress catalog.

  • A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland's Peaceful Revolutions (1958)[7]
    • Polish Volcano: A Case History of Hope (1959)[8]
  • Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field (1965)[9]
    • The Man Who Disappeared: The Strange History of Noel Field (1966)[10]
    • Pion rouge: l'histoire de Noël Field (1967)[11]
  • One of Our H-Bombs is Missing (1967)[12]
  • Europe: A Tapestry of Nations (1987)[13]
    • Europe: Road to Unity (1992)[14]
  • Avenir de la démocratie: un défi pour la société et l'Eglise (2000)[15]

Photos

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Whitney, Craig R. (June 2, 2002). "Flora Lewis, Astute Observer of World Affairs for The Times and Others, Dies at 79". The New York Times.
  2. ^ "This woman's place was everywhere". Sydney Morning Herald. June 24, 2002.
  3. ^ a b Pace, Eric (9 March 1998). "Sydney Gruson, 81, Correspondent, Editor and Executive for The New York Times, Dies". The New York Times.
  4. ^ Goldman, Ari L. "Flora Lewis 1922 – 2002". Jewish Women's Archive.
  5. ^ Brody, Seymour. "Flora Lewis (1918-2002)". Jewish Virtual Library.
  6. ^ Alternman, Eric (2000). Sound and Fury: the Making of the Punditocracy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. p. 132. .
  7. ^ Lewis, Flora (1958). A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland's Peaceful Revolutions. Garden City: Doubleday.
    LCCN 58012051
    .
  8. ^ Lewis, Flora (1959). A Case History of Hope: The Story of Poland's Peaceful Revolutions. London: Secker & Warburg.
    LCCN 66038052
    .
  9. ^ Lewis, Flora (1965). Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field. Garden City: Doubleday.
  10. ^ Lewis, Flora (1965). The Man Who Disappeared: The Strange History of Noel Field. London: Barker.
    LCCN 66002516
    .
  11. ^ Lewis, Flora (1967). Pion rouge: l'histoire de Noël Field. Paris: Gallimard.
    LCCN 68120473
    .
  12. ^ Lewis, Flora (1967). One of Our H-Bombs is Missing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
    LCCN 67014674
    .
  13. ^ Lewis, Flora (1987). Europe: A Tapestry of Nations. New York: Simon & Schuster.
    LCCN 87012878
    .
  14. ^ Lewis, Flora (1992). Europe: Road to Unity (revised). New York: Simon & Schuster.
    LCCN 92234710
    .
  15. ^ Lewis, Flora (1992). Avenir de la démocratie: un défi pour la société et l'Eglise. Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia-Bruylant. .

External resources