Seymour Topping

Seymour Topping (December 11, 1921 – November 8, 2020) was an American journalist best known for his work as a foreign correspondent covering wars in China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the Cold War in Europe. From 1969 to 1986, he was the second senior-most editor at The New York Times. At the time of his death, he was the San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University, where he also served as administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes from 1993 to 2002.

Early life Topping was born as Seymour Topolsky on December 11, 1921, in Harlem. His father, Joseph, and mother, Anna (Seidman), were Russian Jewish immigrants. He grew up in Queens and The Bronx and graduated from Evander Childs High School in the latter borough in 1939. He went on to receive his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1943. In 1949, while covering the civil war, he was taken a prisoner by the advancing communist forces in Nanjing and was released when the nationalist forces surrendered.

Topping served as the president of Emeritus Professors at Columbia, president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (1992–1993), president of the International Advisory Board of the School of Journalism at Tsinghua University, and chairman of the ASNE's Committee on International Communication. He was also a member of the National Committee on United States–China Relations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, and the Century Association. New York Times journalist Robert D. McFadden stated that Topping was "one of the most accomplished foreign correspondents of his generation and a newsroom leader under the renowned executive editor A. M. Rosenthal."

Personal life Seymour Topping gives an introduction on "The Pulitzer prize and the Quality of American Journalism". He was married to photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, and author Audrey Ronning Topping (the daughter of Canadian diplomat Chester Ronning) on November 10, 1948; they had five children. From 1967 until his death, they lived in Scarsdale, New York. One of their daughters, Susan, died of cancer in October 2015.

Topping died on November 8, 2020, in White Plains, New York, at age 98, from a stroke.

Works On the Front Lines of the Cold War: An American Correspondent's Journal from the Chinese Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam (2010). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Journey Between Two Chinas (1972). New York: Harper & Row. The Peking Letter: A Novel of the Chinese Civil War (1999). New York: PublicAffairs. Fatal Crossroads: A Novel of Vietnam 1945 (based partly on the experiences of OSS officer A. Peter Dewey) (2005). White Plains: Signature Books.

Articles by Topping and his wife were included in The New York Times Report from Red China (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971).