This program originally aired online via zoom on March 20th, 2025 at 12:30pm Eastern.
Julie Salamon (New York Times best-selling author) sits down with journalist and author Sam Roberts to discuss his over 50 years of experience as a reporter, writing for The New York Daily News and the New York Times. Sam was first published in the 1st grade when a poem he wrote was featured in School Bank News, published by East New York Savings Bank. Perhaps the moment of seeing his name in print inspired him to be a writer, or maybe it was seeing his parents read 3 to 4 newspapers a day or the fact that his older sister was also a writer. Currently, Sam is on the obituaries staff at The Times. He sees obituaries as mini-biographies, and is always looking for the “Rosebud moment” of a subjects life; an interaction or event that made them into the person they became.
Julie and Sam also discuss moments in United States history when politics and government have felt fractured and tense. Sam values historical context as a lens to understand current events, and the importance of journalism, especially local journalism, as a method to hold politicians accountable.
Sam is the author of over a dozen non-fiction books including The New Yorkers: 31 Remarkable People, 400 Years, and the Untold Biography of the World’s Greatest City, and The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. Sam loves spending time with his family and continues to enjoy the process of researching and writing. His next book, Are they Dead Yet?, about the history of obituaries and the process of writing them, will be available from Bloomsbury Press in 2026.
Topics covered in this program: Cornell University, politics, journalism, American history, Red Scare, Draft Riots, Rosenberg trail, news media, the role of the editor, Mayor Koch, being “very New York,” the values and diversity of New York City, immigration.
