Philip Bennett, an American journalist, was named managing editor of the Washington Post in 2004. [1] He was previously deputy national editor of national security, defense and foreign policy coverage and assistant managing editor for foreign news at the Post. From 1984-1997, he was a journalist at the Boston Globe, where he was a foreign correspondent, metropolitan reporter, assistant editor of Metro news, and finally the Globe's foreign editor. Currently, he is the Eugene C. Patterson Professor at Duke University.
A native of the San Francisco area, Bennett is a Harvard graduate who describes his outlook this way: "I love newspapers and the people who make them." [1] He has been described by other journalists as “a low-key man with a studious air.” [1]
Bennet’s career began when he traveled to Peru "on a lark" in 1982 and became a stringer for the Post, two years later he joined the Boston Globe as a local reporter. He met his wife, who is now a professor of Latin American literature at Georgetown University, in Peru. [1]
In a 2008 speech, "Covering Islam: a Challenge for American Journalism," delivered at the University of California at Irvine, where Bennett was the Chancellor's Distinguished Fellow Lecturer,[2] Bennett said, “At the Post I want more Muslim readers and I want more Muslim journalists,” and called on news organizations to hire more Muslim journalists so that Americans could be taught to understand “the basic tenets of Islam.” [3] The speech was sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, School of Social Sciences, UC Irvine.[4] In October 2008, Bennett gave a speech at Amherst College titled "The Presidential Race, What's the Story?" [5]