Robert Jon Rosenthal

Rosenthal is the son of Irving Rosenthal and Ruth Moss.[2] His father, Irving, was Professor of English and communication at the City College of New York; he created the first two journalism classes at the college in 1936.[5]

Rosenthal has two siblings: David, of Atlanta, Georgia, and Risa Finkel, of Huntington, New York.[5]

Rosenthal with J. Michael Myatt (left) and Daniel Ellsberg (2008)

After graduating from the University of Vermont, where he was a member of the 1970 E.C.A.C. Division II championship ice hockey team,[6] Rosenthal went to work as a news assistant for The New York Times.[2] In the spring of 1971, he was an editorial assistant on the team that produced the Pentagon Papers, which exposed American activities in Southeast Asia.[7] He worked for the paper from 1970 to 1973.[2] From 1974 to 1979, he was a reporter for The Boston Globe.[2]

In 1979, he took a new job as reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he stayed for 22 years.[1][2] Starting on the city desk, he became the paper’s Africa correspondent in 1982,[2] and also covered conflicts in Lebanon and Israel. He returned to Philadelphia in 1986 and became the paper’s foreign editor. During his five-year tenure as foreign editor, his staff won two Pulitzer Prizes.[3] In 1991, Rosenthal became the city editor.[2]

He became the paper’s executive editor on January 1, 1998.[8] At the time, the Inquirer was the 16th-largest daily newspaper in the United States.[8] During his term, he witnessed staff cuts and money-saving changes to the reporting process, including shorter stories and smaller photographs. Rosenthal left the Inquirer in late 2001.[2][9][10]

He then taught classes at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.[11] On September 11, 2002, he became managing editor for the San Francisco Chronicle.[11] He left that position in June 2007.[2]

In 2007, Rosenthal became the executive editor of The Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of journalists working for news outlets throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, tasked with investigating the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.[12]

In January 2008, he became executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting,[1] a nonprofit investigative news agency.[4] Since then, he has overseen the growth of the organization to what is now the largest nonprofit investigative reporting organization in the country, with a staff of 70 and budget of $11 million.[13]

In 1983, Rosenthal received the Third World Reporting Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.[2] In 1986, Rosenthal received the Overseas Press Club Award for magazine writing, the Sigma Delta Chi Award for distinguished foreign correspondence, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in international reporting.[14]

While Rosenthal was managing editor, the San Francisco Chronicle won a Pulitzer Prize for its feature photography.[4] The paper also received the prestigious George Polk Award for its investigative reporting of the BALCO labs and performance-enhancing drugs scandal.[15] From 2002 to 2005, 14 sports writers at the Chronicle were finalists for the Associated Press Sports Editors national award, more than any other paper with a comparable circulation.[15]

While Rosenthal was editor, the Chauncey Bailey Project won awards from Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Online News Association and the National Association of Black Journalists, among others.[16]

The Center for Investigative Reporting has won Society of Professional Journalists Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, a Scripps Howard Award, The George Polk Award, and The MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. CIR was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2012.[4][8][17][18][19]

Rosenthal married Inez Katherina von Sternenfels on November 22, 1985.[2] They have three children together: Adam, Benjamin, and Ariella.[2]