Publishing NOW speaker, Peter Catapano of the New York Times and UCHI Director Michael Lynch discussed publishing and careers in journalism.
Peter Catapano, Editor, Opinion Section, New York Times
October 2, 2018 4-5pm, with reception to follow
Catapano began his career at The Times as an assistant to The Times Editorial Board in 1998. He became a copy editor in 2000 for The New York Times News Service and joined the Opinion section as an editor in 2005, where he began developing projects specifically for the web.
Catapano has created and edited some of the most popular New York Times online series — The Stone, Anxiety, Happy Days, Menagerie and Home Fires — which helped launch the careers of several writers. He received a Publisher’s Award in 2008 for his work in pioneering the online series.
Catapano has edited and published more than 1,000 pieces in The Times, and has worked directly with both beginners and highly accomplished thinkers and writers, including Arthur Danto, E.O. Wilson, Frans de Waal, Peter Singer, Simon Critchley, Thomas Nagel, Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Pico Iyer, Phil Klay, Roy Scranton, Steven Pinker, Siri Hustvedt and Oliver Sacks.
In 2015, Catapano was asked by Dr. Sacks to edit his final essays in The Times chronicling his illness and death, which were collected in “Gratitude” — now a best-selling book by Knopf.
Catapano’s The Stone, established in 2010, is the longest-running online series in Opinion, and draws millions of readers each year. In 2015, Liveright published “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” an anthology of essays from the series. Catapano has sold more than 15,000 copies. Since 2012, about half of the American Philosophical Association’s public philosophy awards have been given to essays published in The Stone. The series has helped bring philosophical thought back into the national conversation.
