Gerald Boyd – 2009
Gerald Boyd’s first job was bagging groceries at Cooper’s Grocery in St. Louis, but he rose to the position of managing editor of the New York Times. Gerald began working at the Post-Dispatch in 1973 after graduating from the MU Journalism School and was a co-founder of the Greater St. Louis Association of Black Journalists. By 1978 Boyd was at the paper’s Washington bureau, and five years after that he joined the Times’ bureau in Washington. The National Association of Black Journalists named him “journalist of the year” in 2001, a year after he’d been promoted to managing editor at the Times. He was leader or co-leader of Times coverage that won nine Pulitzer Prizes. When Boyd left the Times, the paper’s executive editor wrote: “He left behind a great reservoir of respect and affection.”