Alumni Profiles

Alum Editor of New York Times to Step Down

Gail Collins MA '70 (government, now political science), the first woman to run the editorial page of The New York Times, is stepping down January 1 and will be succeeded by Andrew Rosenthal, the deputy editor of the page. Following a leave of absence to write a book, Collins plans to return to the paper in July as a columnist on the Op-Ed page.

Appointed editor of the page in 2001, she “has seen us through the horror of 9/11, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and a time of great political turmoil,” said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the paper’s publisher. Collins also oversaw the physical expansion of the page, to three pages on Sundays from two, and instituted editorials for the Sunday paper’s regional sections covering New York City and its suburbs.

The author of three books, Colins is writing a sequel to the most recent, America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines, published in 2003. A former columnist at New York Newsday and The New York Daily News, she joined the Times as a columnist in 1995. For more about Collins, click here.

October 19, 2006