Robert B. Semple Jr. (born August 12, 1936, in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

, Missouri) is the associate editor of ''

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 ...

'' editorial page, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Semple was raised in

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

and educated at

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, and

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

, where he was Chairman of the Yale Daily News and was elected to Elihu, a senior society. Semple subsequently received an M.A. in history from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1961.The New York Times Editorial Board, Masthead, The New York Times
/ref> In the fall of 1963, he joined the

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bureau of ''The New York Times'', covering housing and civil rights stories during the

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administration. Semple spent a year covering President Johnson himself, and served as

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...

correspondent during Richard Nixon's first term in office. He served thereafter as deputy national editor (1973–75), London bureau chief (1975–77), foreign editor (1977–82), editor of the Op-Ed Page (1982–88) and associate editor of the Editorial Page (1988 to present). Semple received the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his editorials on

environmental A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

issues, including his editorials about a proposed mine that would have been built on the edge of Yellowstone National Park.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Semple, Robert B. Jr. Living people Phillips Academy alumni Yale University alumni American male journalists The New York Times writers The New York Times editors Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing winners 1936 births