September 12, 2008
 | Listen to an audio recording of Bennett's talk |
AMHERST, Mass. – Philip Bennett, managing editor of The Washington Post, will discuss “The Presidential Race: What’s the Story?” as well as his paper’s coverage of the 2008 campaign on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 8 p.m. in the Babbott Room of the Octagon at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Victor S. Johnson Lectureship Fund at Amherst, Bennett’s talk is free and open to the public.
 Philip Bennett, managing editor of The Washington Post, speaks at Amherst College on Oct. 1, 2008. |
Prior to his tenure at The Post, Bennett wrote for The Lima Times in Peru and The Boston Globe, where he was a reporter on the metro staff, a foreign correspondent covering Latin America and later a foreign editor. He left The Globe to join The Post in 1997 as a deputy national editor for coverage of national security, defense and foreign policy and was subsequently named assistant managing editor for foreign news before being promoted to managing editor in 2004. During his five years overseeing foreign news, the newspaper’s international coverage was recognized with numerous awards, including two Pulitzer prizes for international reporting, most recently for coverage of the war in Iraq. Now, as The Post’s second-ranking editor, he supervises 800 journalists in a newsroom that produces one of the country’s leading daily newspapers and contributes to washingtonpost.com. Since he took that position, The Post has been awarded ten Pulitzer Prizes.
Born in San Francisco, Bennett graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in history. He and his family live in Maryland.
The Victor S. Johnson Lectureship Fund was established in memory of Victor S. Johnson (1882-1943) by his sons for the purpose of “bringing to the campus each year a stimulating individual worthy of the lectureship’s purpose of serving the best tradition of the liberal arts and individual freedom.”