Fox Butterfield (born 8 July 1939) is an American journalist who spent much of his 30-year career reporting for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. Butterfield served as ''Times'' bureau chief in Saigon,

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

and as a correspondent in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. During that time, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as a member of ''The New York Times'' team that published the

Pentagon Papers The ''Pentagon Papers'', officially titled ''Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force'', is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 ...

, the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War, in 1971 and won a 1983

National Book Award for Nonfiction The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists ...

for ''China: Alive in the Bitter Sea'', an account of his experience as the first ''Times'' reporter allowed in China after the revolution."National Book Awards – 1983"

National Book Foundation The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established, "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America". Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc.,Edwin McDowell. "Book Notes: 'The Joy Luc ...

. Retrieved 2012-03-11. This was the award for hardcover "General Nonfiction".
From 1980 to 1983 in National Book Awards history there were several nonfiction subcategories including General Nonfiction, with dual hardcover and paperback awards in most categories. He also wrote ''All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence'' (1995) about the child criminal

Willie Bosket William James Bosket Jr. (born December 9, 1962) is an American convicted murderer, whose numerous crimes committed while he was still a minor led to a change in New York state law, so that juveniles as young as 13 could be tried as an adult f ...

. In 1990, Butterfield wrote an article on the first

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ensl ...

to be elected president of the '' Harvard Law Review'', future president of the United States

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

."First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review"
Fox Butterfield. ''The New York Times'', February 6, 1990.

Personal life

Butterfield was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the son of Lyman Henry Butterfield, a historian and a director of the

Institute of Early American History and Culture The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture (OI) is an independent research organization located in Williamsburg, Virginia, sponsored by William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg. Founded in 1943, the OI supports the scholars and s ...

Williamsburg, Virginia Williamsburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is ...

."Elizabeth Mehren and Fox Butterfield, Newspaper Reporters, Marry in Utah." ''The New York Times'', January 31, 1988. The Canadian industrialist Cyrus S. Eaton was one of his grandfathers. His father named him "Fox" after the English Parliamentary leader,

Charles James Fox Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...

, who sided with the colonists. Butterfield graduated from the

Lawrenceville School The Lawrenceville School is a coeducational preparatory school for boarding and day students located in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Lawrenceville is a member of the Eight Scho ...

in 1957. He received a bachelor's degree ''summa cum laude'' and master's degree from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. In 1979 he was granted an honorary doctorate from the

University of Puget Sound The University of Puget Sound (UPS or Puget Sound) is a private university in Tacoma, Washington. The university draws approximately 2,600 students from 44 states and 16 countries. It offers 1,200 courses each year in more than 50 traditional an ...

. In 1988, Butterfield married Elizabeth Mehren, a reporter for ''

The Los Angeles Times ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

''. He has two children, Ethan and Sarah, from a previous marriage. He and Mehren had a daughter, Emily (26 Mar 1988-17 May 1988), and a son, Sam (1990–2013).

Michael Moriarty Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941) is an American-Canadian actor and jazz musician. He received an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for his first acting role on American television as a Nazi SS officer in the 1978 mini-series ''Holocaust'' ...

played Fox Butterfield in the 1993 television movie ''

Born Too Soon ''Born Too Soon'' is a 1993 American television film about the life of Emily Butterfield, a baby girl who was born prematurely and died 53 days after her birth. The film stars Michael Moriarty and Pamela Reed as Emily's parents, Fox Butterfield ...

'', based on Mehren's book about their daughter Emily, who was born prematurely in the late 1980s and lived only six weeks. Mehren was played by

Pamela Reed Pamela Reed (born April 2, 1949) is an American actress. She is known for playing Arnold Schwarzenegger's hypoglycemic police partner in the 1990 movie ''Kindergarten Cop'' and as the matriarch Gail Green in ''Jericho''. She appeared as Marlene ...

. The couple live in

Hingham, Massachusetts Hingham ( ) is a town in metropolitan Greater Boston on the South Shore (Massachusetts), South Shore of the U.S. state of Massachusetts in northern Plymouth County, Massachusetts, Plymouth County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, t ...

, about which Butterfield has sometimes written in ''The Times''.

Criticism

"The Butterfield Effect" is a term coined by

James Taranto James Taranto (born January 6, 1966) is an American journalist. He is editorial features editor for ''The Wall Street Journal'', in charge of the newspaper's op-ed pages, both print and digital.The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' called Best of the Web Today, typically bringing up a headline, "Fox Butterfield, Is That You?" later "Fox Butterfield, Call Your Office". Taranto coined the term after reading Butterfield's articles discussing the "paradox" of crime rates falling while the prison population grew due to tougher sentencing guidelines. Butterfield quoted F.B.I. statistics that from 1994 to 2003 there was a 16 percent drop in arrests for violent crime, including a 36 percent decrease in arrests for murder and a 25 percent decrease in arrests for robbery, but the tough new sentencing laws led to a growth in inmates being sent to prison. Taranto and a ''

Jewish World Review ''Jewish World Review'' is a free, online magazine updated Monday through Friday (except for legal holidays and holy days), which seeks to appeal to "people of faith and those interested in learning more about contemporary Judaism from Jews who t ...

'' columnist, along with the conservative ''Weekly Standard,'' felt that Butterfield should have considered that the tougher sentencing guidelines might have reduced crime by causing more criminals to be in jail.

Bibliography

* ''China: Alive in the Bitter Sea'' (1982) * ''All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence'' (1995) * ''In My Father's House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family'', Knopf (2018)

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Butterfield, Fox 1939 births Writers from Lancaster, Pennsylvania Living people Harvard University alumni American war correspondents The New York Times writers National Book Award winners American male journalists American political writers Lawrenceville School alumni Journalists from Pennsylvania