After a Distinguished newspaper editing career, Gene Roberts joined the University of Maryland College of Journalism in a fulltime tenured faculty position in 1991. Professor Roberts is a journalism graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His newspaper reporting and editing career began at the Goldsboro News-Argus in North Carolina in 1956. Later, he became city editor of the Detroit Free Press and held a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard University. He served as Southern correspondent, Vietnam correspondent and national editor of the New York Times. One of the country’s most honored and respected editors, Roberts joined the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1972 and was executive editor there for 18 years. During his tenure the Inquirer won 17 Pulitzer Prizes. While with the Inquirer, he was also a member of the Maryland College of Journalism’s Board of Visitors and chairman of the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism National Advisory Board. In July 1994, Roberts took a three-year leave as professor to become managing editor of the New York Times, returning to Maryland in 1998. Currently, Roberts teaches classes in reporting, editing, and the ethics and practice of journalism and has also served as senior editor of the American Journalism Review. Actively engaged in work with international journalists, he is currently the American chairman of both the International Press Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists. He is a former chairman of the Pulitzer Board for awards in journalism and arts and letters. In 1993, he received the National Press Club’s "Fourth Estate Award" as a tribute to his lifetime of achievements in journalism.