Longtime NPR journalist Rose Friedman, who helped create the network’s popular “Books We Love” reading guide, has died from cancer at age 38.
Friedman died Sept. 17 at her New York City home after a 15-year career at NPR, leaving behind colleagues who remembered her as a sharp editor, tireless reader and deeply respected newsroom advocate.
Even near the end, Friedman reportedly had one more edit to make.
She asked that her obituary prominently mention her work as a SAG-AFTRA shop steward and what she considered her proudest professional achievement: helping secure expanded paid parental leave at NPR.
“Not the second line but still pretty high up in the story. Rose would understand,” NPR’s Elizabeth Blair wrote in the tribute.
Friedman joined NPR Books as an editorial assistant in 2010 while still in her early 20s and later moved into editing and reporting for the network’s Society & Culture desk.
She eventually helped launch NPR’s Book Concierge, the annual recommendation project now known as “Books We Love,” where she worked to narrow hundreds of staff and critic selections into the final guide.
Novelist Meg Wolitzer, who worked with Friedman on reviews and features, remembered her as someone whose enthusiasm for books was impossible to miss.
“She was voracious,” novelist Meg Wolitzer, who worked with Friedman on NPR reviews and features, told the network.
“What a gifted, delightful, brilliant, deeply kind person. And I would say a true enthusiast. I got so much working with Rose.”
Friedman’s work stretched well beyond book coverage.
She edited recurring features including “This Week’s Must Read” and wrote appreciations of literary figures such as Herman Wouk and publisher Sonny Mehta.
Colleagues said she was also known for pushing back on stories that seemed driven more by hype than substance.
“She would care more about ‘Was this true?’ or as holistic as we could get than, ‘Is it buzzy?’” former NPR supervising editor Theo Balcomb, now a senior editor at The Atlantic, told NPR.
“She had a strong sense of purpose.”
In 2020, Friedman became NPR’s lead reporter covering the sexual assault trial of former movie executive Harvey Weinstein.
She also contributed to NPR’s #MeToo coverage and shared second place in the 2018 National Headliner Awards with Blair and editor-producer Ellen Silva for the feature “Women Are Speaking Up About Harassment And Abuse, But Why Now?”
Near the end of her career, Friedman took a leading role in NPR‘s America 250 project.
Her interest in labor issues ran through both her academic and professional life.
Friedman grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and studied labor history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where her research into worker solidarity on Minnesota’s Iron Range won the Barbara Wertheimer Prize in Labor History.
At NPR, she became active in the newsroom union and worked with correspondent Tom Dreisbach on the SAG-AFTRA committee that pushed the broadcaster to expand paid parental leave.
“Rose’s thought was, ‘let’s go big,’” Dreisbach recalled.
Friedman is survived by her partner and their two children, her parents, Carolyn and Jerry Friedman, and her sisters, Sophie and Nina.
Her death prompted an outpouring of tributes from colleagues who remembered not only her journalism, but also the standards she brought to the newsroom and the people around her.
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[ H/T Trending Politics ]
